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The Memory of the Eyes
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The Memory of the Eyes
Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity
Georgia Frank
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England
© 2000 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frank, Georgia, 1963–
The memory of the eyes : pilgrims to living saints in
Christian late antiquity / Georgia Frank.
p. cm. — (The Transformation of the classical
heritage ; 30)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-22205-9 (alk. paper)
1. Historia monachorum in Aegypto. 2. Palladius,
Bishop of Aspuna, d. ca. 430. Lausiac history. 3. Christian
pilgrims and pilgrimages—History. 4. Monasticism and
religious orders—Egypt—History. I. Title. II. Series.
BR190.H573 F73 2000
270.2—dc21
99-056845
Manufactured in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10 9
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) Perma-
nence of Paper.
Portions of chapter 2 have appeared in “The Historia Mona-

chorum and Ancient Travel Writing,” Studia Patristica 30
(1997): 191–95, and in “Miracles, Monks, and Monuments:
The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto as Pilgrims’ Tales,” in
Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, edited by
David Frankfurter (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 483–505. Reprinted
with permission.
Chapter 4 of this book is a revised and expanded version of

my chapter “The Pilgrim’s Gaze in the Age before Icons,” in
Other Ways of Seeing: Visuality before and beyond the Renais-
sance, edited by Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge University
Press, forthcoming). Reprinted with the permission of Cam-
bridge University Press.
For my parents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
ix
Abbreviations
xi
1. Pilgrims to the Living in Context

1
2. Desert Ascetics and Distant Marvels:
The Historia as Travelogue
35
3. Imagined Journeys:
Literary Paradigms for Pilgrimage to Holy People
79
4. Pilgrims and the Eye of Faith
102
5. How to Read a Face:
Pilgrims and Ascetic Physiognomy
134
6. Pilgrims to the Living and the Memory of the Eyes
171
Select Bibliography
183
Index
211
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many teachers, friends, and colleagues have given generously of them-

selves to support and encourage me during this project. It is a great
pleasure to thank them here. Michael E. Stone first introduced me to
the richness of pilgrims’ stories in a graduate research course at Harvard
University in 1988. The ensuing doctoral dissertation took shape under
the expert guidance of Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Margaret R. Miles.
I count myself fortunate to have had such trusting, generous, and, above
all, inspiring teachers.
Derek Krueger deserves special thanks for reading and commenting
on various drafts of every chapter. An astute reader of saints’ lives, he
deepened my own appreciation for the power of Christian storytelling.
I am also grateful to Peter Brown, Elizabeth A. Clark, James Goehring,
Patricia Cox Miller, and an anonymous reader for UC Press, who, at
various stages, graciously read the entire manuscript and offered valu-
able suggestions for improvement.
Many other colleagues provided expert comments on individual
chapters. Several of them also shared their own research prior to publi-
cation. In particular, I thank David Brakke, Virginia Burrus, Douglas
Burton-Christie, Susan Calef, Amy DeRogatis, David Frankfurter, Hel-
mut Koester, Blake Leyerle, Pierre Maraval, Robert S. Nelson, Claudia
ix
x / Acknowledgments
Rapp, Ian Rutherford, Elizabeth Ann Schechter, Teresa Shaw, Gary

Vikan, James Wetzel, Robert L. Wilken, and Lawrence Wills. Our con-
versations over the years have been an endless source of insight and
delight. Even with the benefit of these expert readers, I bear full respon-
sibility for any errors. At Colgate, I received talented research assistance
from Alisa Herrin, Rachel Lutwick, and Sarah Murkett. I am also
indebted to several librarians, for whom geographical distance and tight
schedules present no obstacle. In particular, I thank Allan Janik and
Laura Whitney at Harvard Divinity School, as well as Anne Ackerson,
Emily Hutton, and Faith Stivers at Colgate. For shepherding this proj-
ect from manuscript to book, I am grateful to Kate Toll and Cindy Ful-
ton at UC Press. Erika Büky deserves special thanks for copyediting
with such a keen eye, as does Barbara Cohen for preparing the index. I
am also glad to thank various organizations for the financial assistance
needed to complete this project, including a dissertation fellowship
from the Mellon Foundation, a summer fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and several grants from Colgate’s Fac-
ulty Research Council.
My most profound debt, however, is to my family: my husband, Jef-
frey McArn, whose laughter and patience are gifts beyond measure; our
daughters, Madlyn and Halley, irrepressible wonders to our eyes; and
my parents, Joseph Allan Frank and Brigitte Paquet Frank, who first
taught me to follow the heart and to whom I dedicate this work as a
token of my love and gratitude.
Hamilton, New York

January 6, 1999
ABBREVIATIONS
I refer to ancient works by their standard English titles in the text of

the book. Titles of ancient works follow abbreviations from the Oxford
Classical Dictionary (2d ed., edited by N. G. L. Hammond and H. H.
Scullard [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970], ix–xxii), or Quasten (3:556–62;
4:613–27), with occasional modification. Where I have quoted from
modern translations, I also cite the translator’s name or series abbrevia-
tion and page number(s). For series or multivolume works, volume
number is also provided as needed. In the notes, however, I have pre-
served the scholarly convention of Latin abbreviations for these works.
For abbreviations set in boldface below, full bibliographical citations to
critical editions and modern translations can be found in the primary
sources section of the bibliography.
ACW Ancient Christian Writers

ANF Select Library of the Ante-Nicene Fathers
Apophth. Apophthegmata patrum, Greek alphabetical collec-
tion
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
CS Cistercian Studies
xi
xii / Abbreviations
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium

CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CWS Classics of Western Spirituality
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
DS Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, doc-
trine et histoire
Ep. Epistula
FC Fathers of the Church
GCS Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der
ersten drei Jahrhunderte
HL Palladius, Historia lausiaca
HM Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Greek text)
Hom. Homilia, Homiliae
HR Theodoret, Historia religiosa
HTR Harvard Theological Review
It. Eg. Egeria, Itinerarium Egeriae
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JAC Suppl. 20 Akten des XII. internationalen Kongresses für
christliche Archäologie. Bonn, 1991. 2 vols.
Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungs-
band 20 (1995): Münster: Aschendorf
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
Lampe, PGL G. W. H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1961)
LCL Loeb Classical Library
Abbreviations / xiii
LVJer Athanasius, Lettre à des vierges qui étaient allées prier

à Jérusalem
NewDocs G. H. R. Horsely, ed., New Documents Illustrating
Early Christianity (Macquarie University: Ancient
History Documentary Research Centre, 1981)
NPNF Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers
PG Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
Quasten Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. Repr. West-
minster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1983–1986
Regnault, no. Lucien Regnault, ed. Les sentences des pères du désert:
Série des anonymes (Spiritualité Orientale, 43;
Sablé-sur-Sarthe/Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Solesmes-
Bellefontaine, 1985)
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
SC Sources chrétiennes
SH Subsidia Hagiographica
SP Studia Patristica
TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des
altchristlichen Literatur
V. Vita
V. Ant. Athanasius, Vita Antonii
V. Mel. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae
VC Vigiliae Christianae
one
Pilgrims to the Living in Context
The first step for any pilgrim lands not on the road, but somewhere in
the imagination. Long before Jerome set out on his own journey to the
Egyptian desert in the fourth century, he wrote stories of pilgrims trav-
eling to Egyptian holy men, as in the Life of Saint Paul, the First Hermit.1
When friends made actual journeys, Jerome could barely withhold his
vicarious delight. He wrote to Rufinus in 374: “I hear you are penetrat-
ing the secret recesses of Egypt, visiting the companies of monks and
paying a round of visits to the heavenly family upon earth.”2 Having
created the ideal pilgrim, Jerome’s next step was to imitate him. Thus in
386 he repeated Rufinus’s journey, seeking out for himself the “secret
recesses” and “heavenly families” he had imagined.
In the years preceding that journey, Jerome, like many Christians of
his day, fed his fascination by reading the lives of these saints.3 Such
1. On the dating, see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Contro-
versies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 60–61. For an insightful analysis of
the Life of Paul as it reflects Jerome’s ambivalence toward the desert, see now
Patricia Cox Miller, “Jerome’s Centaur: A Hyper-icon of the Desert,” JECS 4
(1996): 209–33, esp. 214–16, nn. 31–32.
2. Jerome, Ep. 3.1 [to Rufinus, 374] (Labourt, 1.11).
3. For example, Jerome, Ep. 127.5. On the visits of eastern ascetics to the
1
2 / Pilgrims to the Living in Context
tales recounted the wonder-working and wisdom of distant monastics,

for whom the desert became a stage for biblical spectacles. Christian
audiences were drawn by these stories into another world, one shaped
(and authenticated) by unceasing prayer, prophecy, healing, and exor-
cism. Some men and women became so deeply attracted to this world
that they set out to see the living saints for themselves. Such visitors did
not escape hagiographers’ attention: just as converts to monasticism
made “the desert a city,” as Athanasius famously remarked, so pilgrims
who flocked to the living saints left “every road resembling a river.”4
Such panoramic language points to the popularity of this practice but
tells us little about pilgrims’ religious experiences.
This book sets out to fill that gap by exploring the religious sensibil-
ities of pilgrims who journeyed to visit living saints. Two works are cen-
tral to this investigation: The History of the Monks in Egypt, an anony-
mous description by a Jerusalem monk written in the final years of the
fourth century, and the Lausiac History (ca. 420) by Palladius, bishop of
Helenopolis. These travelogues provide the most extensive firsthand
accounts we have of pilgrims’ journeys. Through collections of vignettes
describing their encounters, pilgrims offered a distinctive window on
this world. To be sure, it is hardly a transparent window: we cannot rely
on these pilgrims for a detailed or accurate account of monastic life in
Egypt.5 But that is not my main object. I examine the literary sensibili-
ties of these pilgrim-authors as a way of gaining deeper insight into their
West, see Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome
and Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 79–83, 93–95.
4. Theodoret, HR 26.11 (Price, 165). Cf. V. Ant. 14 (Gregg. 42–43);
V. Chariton, 16 (DiSegni, 406); V. Daniel Styl. 16 (Dawes/Baynes, p. 16); Syr. V.
Sym., 106 (Doran, 174–75). On pilgrimage to Simeon’s pillar, see André-Jean
Festugière, Antioche païenne et chrétienne: Libanius, Chrysostome et les moines de
Syrie (Paris: Boccard, 1959), 351–52.
5. On the development of Egyptian monasticism, see Rousseau, Ascetics,
9–55; Ewa Wipszycka, “Le monachisme égyptien et les villes,” Travaux et
mémoires 12 (1994): 1–44.
Pilgrims to the Living in Context / 3
religious sensibilities. As literary works, these travelogues provide a

window that is framed, textured, and tinted by pilgrims’ own desires and
delights. The poetics of pilgrims’ writings can afford a more nuanced
understanding of their perceptions and religious aspirations. Through
these stories from the desert, one discovers the literary worlds pilgrims
roamed long before they set out into the desert.
TALES OF THE MONKS
The appetite for monastic lore was especially keen in the final decades
of the fourth century. As young monks in Bethlehem, John Cassian and
his friend Germanus hung on every word of an Egyptian cellmate, who
was later exposed as a fugitive abbot seeking to escape the burdens of
leadership. Although the abbot’s time with the young monks was cut
short, he nevertheless inspired them “to travel around quickly to the
holy men and monasteries” of Egypt.6 Modern readers of the Institutes
and Conferences can lose sight of this younger Cassian, whose writings on
Egypt were intended to serve emerging monastic establishments in
Gaul. Still, one catches glimpses of the youthful monk, infatuated by the
exotic appeal of distant sages.7 A similar exoticism inspired another Gal-
lic writer, Sulpicius Severus, to record the travels of his friend Postumi-
anus.8 From these snippets, lay audiences pieced together an alluring
image of holy people in distant lands.
One figure in particular, a virgin known as Litia of Thessalonica, cap-
tures well these intersecting interests between tales of the monks and
6. Conl. 17.2 (Ramsey, 587); cf. 17.5. On Pinufius, see Cassian, Conl. 20.1–2;
Inst. 4.31.
7. On this monastic agenda in Cassian’s writings, see Rousseau, Ascetics,
177–85, and now Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 15–19.
8. Dial. 1.1 (NPNF 2.11.24). On the Dialogues’ affinities with other travel
writing, see Clare Stancliffe, St. Martin and His Hagiographer (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1983), 102–7.
ascetic travel. A Coptic version of the Lausiac History mentions that she
was a “scribe writing books” who set out to visit Macarius the Egyptian
after hearing a report about him.9 As a scribe, she might have tran-
scribed the very tales of the monks that kindled her desire to travel. Her
story conveys the elision between geographical distance and tales of
remote monks.
Along with actual pilgrims there were armchair pilgrims, those who
demanded and consumed stories of travels to the saints without ever
making such journeys themselves. Thus although both the Lausiac His-
tory and the History of the Monks of Egypt were composed by actual pil-
grims, the impetus to record their memories came from audiences who
probably never made the journey. Sadly, those armchair pilgrims rarely
figure in scholarly investigations into pilgrimages to the living. Part of
the problem is that most of these studies have drawn primarily from
saints’ lives, or, to put it in pilgrims’ terms, from the perspective of the
destination (or the saint) and not the pilgrim. As saints’ lives would have
us see the phenomenon, pilgrims had concrete needs that the holy per-
sons met.10 Pilgrims needed a cure; the holy man healed. Pilgrims
requested a prophecy; the holy man delivered. Pilgrims sought wisdom;
the holy man imparted it. This supply-and-demand model distorts our
picture of the pilgrims. The pilgrim is cast either as worthy supplicant
or as intrusive nuisance.11 Such studies neglect how pilgrims expressed
9. Butler, The Lausiac History, part 1, 149–50, citing Amélineau, Monuments

pour servir . . . Monastères de la Basse Egypte, 240–41.
10. Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1966), 46–53. Bernhard Kötting, “Wallfahrten zu lebenden
Personen im Altertum,” in Wallfahrt kennt keine Grenzen, ed. L. Kriss-Rettenbeck
and G. Mohler (Munich/Zurich: Schell & Steiner, 1984), 226–34. Briefly dis-
cussed in Pierre Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie
des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris: Cerf, 1985), 50, and Élisabeth Malamut,
Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris: CNRS, 1993), 199–208. A noteworthy
exception is Rousseau, Ascetics, esp. 79–83, 93–95.
11. Evagrius of Pontus regarded visitors as far worse than a nuisance: their
persistent knocking at the door and urges to touch holy men’s clothes made
their own sense of displacement, their expectations, and their spiritual

progress. In short, the supply-and-demand model of previous studies
has failed to offer what I call, for lack of a better term, pilgrims’ spiritu-
ality.
Recovering the experiences of pilgrims in a distant time and place is
a task fraught with obstacles, particularly because they apparently felt
little need to record introspective moments, moods, or reflections. Yet
their aspirations and religious imagination are not lost to us. The narra-
tive features of pilgrims’ stories can reveal a great deal about their cog-
nitive states, perceptions, and rituals.12 The tales of late antique pil-
grims amount to more than a serial catalog of monks and localities.
More storytellers than census-takers, these pilgrims used language that,
on closer inspection, reveals their religious sensibilities and expecta-
tions. Thus I approach the History of the Monks in Egypt and the Lausiac
History more as literary creations than as historical chronicles. When
pilgrims describe the wonders and terrors of monasticism, I do not dis-
count incredible details or attempt to judge the plausibility of such
reports. If the aim is to understand the totality of pilgrims’ experiences
as represented through their stories, we should regard these tales as
meaningful fictions through which pilgrims generated an image of
monastics with which their audience could interact.13 To accommodate
their audience’s expectations they borrowed familiar tropes and vocabu-
them none other than agents of the demon vainglory (Praktikos 13; trans. Bam-
berger, 19).
12. Most instructive is Candace Slater’s comparison of pilgrims’ and resi-
dents’ stories about Padre Cícero, Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in
Northeast Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 117–48,
esp. 130, 146–47. I thank Peter Brown for this reference.
13. My thinking here is shaped by Averil Cameron’s groundbreaking study,
Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp. 89–119, 141–52. Also
important is Candace Slater’s work on the affinities between narrative form and
ritual behavior in pilgrims’ narratives (Trail of Miracles, esp. 130, 228).
lary from other types of travel tales, including accounts of otherworldly

and exotic voyages.
My task, then, is to identify these literary “traces” and understand
their role in shaping pilgrims’ perceptions of holy people. Through a
literary analysis of pilgrims’ writings, one discovers a religious imagina-
tion that borrows from travel writing, the Bible, saints’ lives, and vision-
ary literature, all of which shaped the ways pilgrims described journey-
ing to see sacred persons.
HOLY PLACES, HOLY PEOPLE,

AND THE BIBLICAL PAST
In addition to broadening the literary context for pilgrimages to the liv-

ing, I also consider a broader ritual context: pilgrimages to the biblical
holy places. Many pilgrims to the Holy Land reported visiting holy
people in the course of their tours of the holy places. Many such tours
took place as early as the 380s. Jerome, accompanied by the Roman
widow Paula and her daughter, Eustochium, toured the holy places in
Palestine as well as the monastic settlements around Alexandria and
Nitria.14 At this time another pilgrim from the West, known as Egeria,
visited monks in Nitria, the Thebaid, and eventually in Syria. No doubt
her interest was piqued by the various monastics who served as hosts
and guides during her journey.15 Some pilgrims began their tours of the
holy places with visits to monastics, as Melania the Younger did in 417
when she toured cells around Alexandria on her way to Jerusalem, to
“worship (proskune^w) at the Holy Places.”16 Such combined tours to
14. Jerome, Ep. 108.9–14.

15. It. Eg. 9.1, 6; 7.1. Cf. Hagith Sivan, “Pilgrimage, Monasticism, and the
Emergence of Christian Palestine in the Fourth Century,” in The Blessings of Pil-
grimage, ed. Robert Ousterhout (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990),
54–65.
16. V. Mel. 34–40, esp. 34, cf. 37 (Clark, 50–52). On the date of her depar-
ture for Jerusalem, see Clark, Life of Melania the Younger, 219 n. 58. Palladius
holy places and holy people remained common well into the seventh
century.17
The connection between holy places and holy people seemed natural
to these Christians. Cassian and Germanus were standing in the Cave of
the Nativity at Bethlehem when they vowed to set out for the monas-
teries of Egypt.18 That so many pilgrims to the holy places also made
visits to holy people suggests that journeying to holy destinations,
whether people or places, reflects a coextensive piety. Unfortunately,
pilgrims’ vocabulary does not allow us to push this claim further, since
there was no single word in either Greek or Latin for travel to a holy
destination, or “pilgrimage,” as moderns tend to use (and overuse) the
term.19 A single paragraph from the Life of Melania the Younger (chapter
(HL 46.2, 5) mentions a similar path undertaken by Melania’s grandmother,

Melania the Elder, who toured Nitria for six months and then settled in
Jerusalem, though under different circumstances. Cf. Jerome, Ep. 4.2; Nicole
Moine, “Melaniana,” Revue des études augustiniennes 15 (1980): 3–79, esp. 13–19.
17. For example, Leontius of Neapolis, Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, 1
(Ryden, 124; Krueger, 134), the life of a sixth-century figure that reflects seventh-
century practices (Krueger, 134 n. 7); Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Sab. 63 (Schwartz,
164.14–15; Price, 174); id., V. Euth. 6 (Schwartz, 14.5–9; Price, 9). See Yizhar
Hirschfeld, The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1992), 16. Bernard Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre
de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 116–17. Bernard
Flusin and J. Paramelle, eds., “De Syncletica in deserto Iordanis,” Analecta Bol-
landiana 100 (1982): 305–17. On the close ties between Judaean desert monas-
ticism and holy land pilgrimage, see Yizhar Hirschfeld, “Life of Chariton: In
Light of Archaeological Research,” in Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity,
ed. Vincent Wimbush (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 425–47, esp. 428.
18. Cassian, Conl. 17.5; on their itinerary, see Stewart, Cassian the Monk,
8–12.
19. For terms referring to holy land pilgrimage, see Maraval, Lieux saints et
pèlerinages, 137–38. Matthew Dillon’s list of classical Greek terms for cults and
festivals (Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece [New York: Routledge, 1997],
xv–xvi) suggests a similar emphasis on the activity performed at the destination,
37) illustrates the problem: her visits to famous monks are described in
terms of “visit[ing] the saints” (∂storúsomen toÙv jg¥ouv), “tour[ing]”
(peri±gon) the cells, and setting forth for “spiritual emporia” (t¶n pneu-
matik¶n òmpor¥an)—a shopping expedition.20 Without an umbrella term
for what we might consider pilgrim behaviors and dispositions, it is
important not to exaggerate differences between the two types of jour-
neys.
To be sure, there are real differences between journeying to holy
places and to holy people; not least among them, holy places do not
react to the pilgrim’s presence, do not walk away or look one in the eye.
Whether those differences are significant to pilgrims’ experiences
requires more careful consideration. Too narrow a focus on the destina-
tions runs the risk of obscuring other elements, including the pilgrim. It
is more helpful to take into consideration the type of pilgrimage or,
specifically, the shape of a journey. As the Hinduist David Haberman has
observed, some pilgrimages are linear, leading the pilgrim toward a sin-
gle, fixed destination, whereas others, which he calls “circular” or “goal-
less” pilgrimages, have no ultimate object. The presence or absence of a
goal, he claims, determines pilgrims’ behaviors, attitudes, and experi-
ences.21 Christian pilgrimages in late antiquity might also be classified
along these lines, with pilgrimage to holy places fitting the model of
rather than on the journey as the defining activity. On theoria as the defining
activity, see Ian Rutherford, “Theoric Crisis: The Dangers of Pilgrimage in
Greek Religion and Society,” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni n.s. 19
(1995): 275–92.
20. V. Mel. 37 (Gorce, 196; Clark, 52; emended). Both Gorce and Clark
miss the mercantile overtones by translating emporia simply as “expedition.” I
thank Peter Brown for calling to my attention the mercantile dimension of
emporia. Cf. Eusebius, Dem. Evang. 5 (proem); see Lampe, PGL, s.v. “òmpor¥a,”
457a.
21. On this typological distinction, see David L. Haberman, Journey
through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna (New York: Oxford, 1994),
esp. 71–76 (I thank one of the Press’s anonymous readers for recommending
“linear” pilgrimage, and journeys to holy people coming closer to the

type of open-ended, circular journey that Haberman studies.22
Although typologies such as Haberman’s allow us to recognize the
distinctiveness of pilgrimages to the living, both types of journeys also
share important affinities. Given the emphasis on inversion, opposition,
and otherness in current theories of pilgrimage,23 it is easy to overlook
significant circumstances common to both types of pilgrimage. Pilgrims
to holy places often relied on monastics for guidance, lodging, and
access to sacred places.24 Such frequent contacts also provided occasions
this work). In a different context (rural Brazilian pilgrimage), Candace Slater

calls attention to the linearity and circularity of narrative forms pertaining to a
single destination (Trail of Miracles, 146–47). On the irrelevance of current the-
ories of “sacred center” for interpreting circular pilgrimages such as the Krish-
naite circumambulation of Braj, see Haberman, Journey through the Twelve
Forests, 69–72; cf. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York:
Bollingen, 1954).
22. Even if Haberman’s distinction between the dispositions of pilgrims and
ascetics does not apply to late antique Christians ( Journey through the Twelve
Forests, 107).
23. For example, Victor Turner, “The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal,”
History of Religions 12 (1973): 191–230. More rewarding than the application of
anthropological models has been the use of literary and semiotic theory for
interpreting ancient pilgrims’ narratives, as in Blake Leyerle, “Landscape as
Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives,” JAAR 64 (1996):
119–43.
24. On contacts between pilgrims to the holy places and Palestinian monks,
see Hirschfeld, Judean Desert Monasteries, 55–56; Joseph Patrich, Sabas: Leader of
Palestinian Monasticism (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), 8–9;
Christine Saulnier, “La vie monastique en Terre Sainte auprès des lieux de
pèlerinages (IVe siècle),” in Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae 6, section 1: Les
transformations dans la société chrétienne au IVe siècle (Bibliothèque de la revue
d’histoire ecclésiastique 67; Brussels, 1983), 223–48, esp. 240–43.
On the archaeology of pilgrimage, see esp. Elzbieta Makowiecka, “Monastic
Pilgrimage Centre at Kellia in Egypt,” JAC Suppl. 20, 2:1002–15; Philippe
Bridel, “La dialectique de l’isolement et de l’ouverture dans les monastères kel-
liotes: Espaces réservés—espaces d’accueil,” in Le site monastique copte des Kellia:
for sharing stories about more illustrious monks, as we know from Ege-
ria, who describes these conversations in her diary.25
[The bishop at Haran] was kind enough to tell us much else besides,
as indeed did the other holy bishops and holy monks, always about
God’s Scriptures, or the deeds of holy monks, whether it was mira-
cles done by those who had already passed away, or the deeds done
today by those “still in the body,” especially the ascetics. For I want
you to realize, loving sisters, that the monks’ conversation is always
either about God’s Scriptures or the deeds of the great monks.26
Egeria’s stress on the two sole topics of conversation, scripture and the
deeds of the monks, reminds us how closely pilgrims associated the
Bible with the holy places and people. In fact, although routes to holy
people were far less systematized than circuits of holy places,27 the
desire to experience the Bible more vividly lay behind both types of
travel.
The most interesting continuity between pilgrimage to living saints
and to holy places rests in the reading habits of the pilgrims themselves.
The Bible was the touchstone against which the holiness of people
or places was measured, as Melania’s studies prior to travel illustrate.
Sources historiques et explorations archéologiques (Geneva: Mission suisse d’archéolo-

gie copte, 1986). On the hospice, see Hirschfeld, Judean Desert Monasteries,
196–200; for Egypt, J. Maspero and E. Drioton, Fouilles exécutées à Baouît
(Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1931), vi–viii. For literary evi-
dence of guesthouses, see Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins, 207. On pos-
sible ceramic evidence for pilgrims’ presence, see Ewa Wipszycka, “Aspects
économiques de la vie aux Kellia,” in Le site monastique copte des Kellia, 117–44;
reprinted in id., Études sur le christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’Antiquité (Studia
Ephemeridis Augustinianum 52; Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum,
1996), 332–62, esp. 355–56.
25. It. Eg. 21.3 (Wilkinson, 120–21).
26. It. Eg. 20.13 (Wilkinson, 120).
27. Pierre Maraval, “Les itinéraires de pèlerinage en Orient (entre le 4e et
le 7e S.),” JAC Suppl. 20, 1:291–300.
According to her biographer, she was an avid reader of both the Bible
and saints’ lives. In fact, we are told, she read the entire Bible three or
four times in a given year and also copied, interpreted, and distributed it
for others. Even though “the Bible never left her holy hands,”28 she also
managed to devote considerable energies to reading biographies of
famous ascetics, “as if she were eating dessert.”29 This assiduity suggests
that for Melania, reading the deeds and words of famous ascetics was, in
effect, an extension of her biblical studies.30
That continuity between scripture and hagiography plays itself out in
her itinerary.31 Had the scriptures and lives been disconnected in her
mind, she would probably have gone directly to Jerusalem rather than
start the journey in Egypt. That she chose to visit the Egyptian monks
before she set sail for Jerusalem suggests that in Egypt she was already
effectively, if not, actually, engaged in an uninterrupted meditation on
the scriptures. Like that of Paula, who visualized Christ in the flesh both
at Golgotha and before monks in Egypt,32 Melania’s journey provided
the occasion for immediate perception of the biblical figures them-
selves. For these two women, to gaze at holy people or holy places was
to gaze at the scriptures.
A more concrete expression of the desire to gaze on the biblical past
is found in the souvenirs pilgrims brought home almost two centuries
later. The images decorating pilgrims’ flasks often created anachro-
nisms by combining iconographic details from a biblical story with con-
28. V. Mel. 21 (Clark, 44).

29. V. Mel. 23 (Clark, 45).
30. Melania’s reading habits illustrate well Marc Van Uytfanghe’s notion of
the “Bible ‘actualisée’ ” (“L’empreinte biblique sur la plus ancienne hagiogra-
phie occidentale,” in Le monde latin antique et la Bible, ed. Jacques Fontaine and
Charles Pietri [Paris: Beauchesne, 1985], 565–610, esp. 572); cf. Lynda Coon,
Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), esp. 1–27.
31. V. Mel. 37 (Clark, 52).
32. Jerome, Ep. 108.10, 14.
temporary architectural or liturgical details from the holy site. For

example, on one souvenir, the women who discovered Jesus’ empty
tomb are depicted carrying a liturgical implement (a censer), rather than
the spices and ointments described in the Gospel accounts. And the
empty tomb shows the grillwork that enclosed the fifth-century
shrine.33
These flasks, though dating from a later period, provide an icono-
graphic analogy to the experiences fourth-century pilgrims describe.
The image on the flask represents an event that occurs both in the bib-
lical past and in the pilgrim’s present. When Jerome spoke of entering
biblical time, he signaled those transcendent moments to his readers by
invoking a mode of perception he called the “eye of faith.”34 Sometimes
he left the oculis fidei out altogether and spoke literally of seeing Christ
in his burial shroud.35 This idea that the human eye can see beyond
33. Gary Vikan, “Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis on

Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art,” in Ousterhout, The Blessings of Pilgrimage,
97–107, esp. 101–2. See also Gary Vikan, “Art, Medicine and Magic in Early
Byzantium,” DOP 38 (1984): 65–86. Both Vikan and J. Z. Smith (To Take Place:
Toward Theory in Ritual [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987], 86–94)
draw special attention to this ritual convergence of biblical time and pilgrim’s
time. See also E. D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, A.D.
312–460 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), esp. 83–127; Charles Renoux, “The Read-
ing of the Bible in the Ancient Liturgy of Jerusalem,” in The Bible in Greek
Christian Antiquity, ed. and trans. Paul M. Blowers (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1997): 389–414, esp. 402–4; Jean-Daniel Dubois, “Un
pèlerinage Bible en main: L’itinéraire d’Égérie (381–384),” in Moïse géographe:
Recherches sur les représentations juives et chrétiennes de l’espace, ed. Alain
Desreumaux and Francis Schmidt (Paris: Vrin, 1988), 55–77, esp. 62–74. On an
emerging Christian theology of the holy places during the fourth century, see
Robert Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 108–25; and P. W. L. Walker, Holy
City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 35–130.
34. Jerome, Ep. 108.10 (NPNF 2.6.199).
35. Jerome, Ep. 46.5 (NPNF 2.6.62).
physical appearances to gain a fuller perception of biblical events or fig-

ures is important for understanding the spirituality of pilgrims to the
living.
PILGRIMS AND SENSORY PIETY
Although pilgrims to the living rarely mentioned using their own “eye
of faith” or “spiritual vision,”36 their reports suggest that they attached
great importance to seeing a holy person. Lives of the saints had
instilled that expectation in them; in the widely read Life of Anthony, for
example, pilgrims would have been struck by the profound visual
impression he made on visitors.37 In his climactic description of
Anthony’s first appearance after twenty years’ seclusion, Athanasius pro-
vides a liturgical tone to the epiphaneia of the holy man, who “came forth
as though from some shrine. . . . This was the first time he appeared
from the fortress for those who came out to see him. And when they
beheld him, they were amazed to see that his body had maintained its
former condition . . . just as they had known him prior to his with-
drawal.”38 Significant here are the theatrical overtones, with the star
who feels “elated” when he sees his followers. The details of this open-
air theater supplied the cues by which the literary audience could iden-
tify itself with the spectators in the desert.
Two letters to the holy man Paphnutius also reflect this keen interest
in seeing the holy man. In a badly damaged papyrus from the mid-
fourth century,39 a woman named Valeria wrote to Paphnutius to ask
36. Paula’s experience comes closest to this idea: Jerome, Ep. 108.14.
37. Athanasius, V. Ant. 14, 88; cf. 62.
38. V. Ant. 14 (Gregg, 42).
39. P. Lond. 6 (1924) 1926 in Jews and Christians in Egypt, ed. and trans.
H. Idris Bell (London: British Museum, 1924), 108–10; reprinted with commen-
tary in NewDocs 4, no. 123, 245–50. Translations are taken from NewDocs edi-
tion. The practice of sending letters in lieu of making pilgrimages is reported by
Callinicos in the V. Hypatii, 36.7, ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, SC 177 (1971). On the
that he pray for her breathing disorder. More striking is the way she put
the request: “Even though in body I have not come to your feet, yet in
spirit I have come to your feet.” These words simulate a journey: her
letter becomes the vehicle by which she “approaches” the holy man.
And with that imagined approach comes a visual perception of Paphnu-
tius: “By those who are ascetics and devotees,” she explains, “religious
revelations are exhibited.”40 Her request, then, suggests a surrogate pil-
grim, approaching the feet of a body that displays the divine “revela-
tions.”
One finds a similar emphasis on visual experience in another letter to
Paphnutius, this time from a supplicant requesting a prayer for the pil-
grim who is delivering the letter.41 His request is: “[May] the man who
is setting out to your piety be found worthy to embrace [Paphnutius]
also with [his] very eyes.”42 To “embrace” with the eyes signals not just
the assumption that virtue is visible but also the belief that seeing the
holy provides an active, tactile encounter with it. Thus even when
describing the vicarious experience of meeting a holy man, Christians
showed what they came to expect of such encounters: a visual access to
the divine.
These sensory expectations, at a time when Christians pondered the
meanings of the Incarnation, are not difficult to understand. One
important implication of the idea that God assumed a body in the per-
son of Jesus was that God now infused the entire material world, includ-
ing places, bodies, and objects. How to perceive that divine presence
became an important question for theologians. As more Christians
claimed to taste, see, and touch divine presence in their devotions, it
letter as an instrument of visual presence, see Evagrius, Ep. ad Melaniam, 1 (Par-

mentier, 8).
40. P. Lond. 6 (1924) 1926, lines 9–11 (Bell, 108–9): t‹n gÇr ÖskoÏntwn kaº
qrhskeufintwn ÖpokalÏnmata dikneônte.
41. P. Lond. 1925, mid-fourth century C.E. (Bell, 106–7).
42. P. Lond. 1925, lines 6–7.
became increasingly difficult to uphold the apologists’ stance that “in

order to know God, we need no body at all,” as Origen once said.43
Within a century of Origen’s protest, Ephrem the Syrian valorized
the senses when he described the Incarnation in the following terms:
“For it was not simply a body that our Lord put on; He likewise
arrayed Himself with limbs and clothes so that by reason of his limbs
and clothes, the afflicted would be encouraged to approach Him.”44
Significant here is Ephrem’s insistence that incarnation meant more
than simply having a body. Even the clothes on that body fulfilled a
divine purpose, providing more points of sensory access to the divine.
Ephrem explains the importance of the clothed body: “Those who
were encouraged by His tenderness would approach his body, while
those who were apprehensive for fear of Him would approach His
clothing.”45 By insisting on various ways to “approach” that body,
43. Origen, C. Cels. 7.33 (Chadwick, 421). See also Robert J. Hauck, “‘They
Saw What They Said They Saw’: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian
Polemic,” HTR 81 (1988): 239–49. On the implications of incarnational think-
ing, see Athanasius, De incarnatione 8, text in Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione,
ed. and trans. R. W. Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971);
Evagrius, Ep. ad Melaniam, 3 (Parmentier, 10); Susan Ashbrook Harvey,
“St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation,” JTS n.s. 49 (1998): 109–28. For a dis-
cussion of the doctrine’s implications for holy places, see Walker, Holy City, Holy
Places? 80–92, 118–20; Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 139–55; id., “How on Earth Could
Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places,” JECS 2
(1994): 257–71. For an overview of the political and social conditions behind that
new investment in the material world, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Chris-
tendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 34–44.
44. Ephrem, Sermo de Domino nostro, 13.2 (FC 91: 288–89).
45. Ibid., cf. 48.1 (“Glory to the Hidden One who put on visibility so that
sinners could approach him” [FC 91: 323]); additional examples are discussed in
Sebastian Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in
Syriac Tradition,” in Typus, Symbol, Allegorie bei den österlichen Vätern und ihren
Parallelen im Mittelalter, ed. M. Schmidt (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1982),
11–40, esp. 15–18.
Ephrem created the conditions for a sensory awareness through prox-

imity.
Christian pilgrims described how sanctity smelled and how it
sounded; most of all, they testified to how it looked.46 The spectacle of
desert asceticism was conveyed through physical descriptions of holy
people and in comments that stress the importance of face-to-face
encounters. As one pilgrim explained, he came to a holy man because
“the memory of what we have seen is not easily erased.”47 Thus, even if
readers were not given a clear idea of exactly what was meant by “we
have seen,” they knew that the visual encounter had had a permanent
effect. By these and other literary flags, the reader learned to scrutinize
the narrative for visual cues—in short, to expect visible sanctity. In these
sensory cues, audiences marked a path by which to “approach” holiness,
even if only in the imagination.48
The sensory dimensions of this literature call our attention to a
larger concern among late antique Christians: how the physical senses
might recognize, know, and respond to the presence of the sacred.49
This question plays itself out in the pilgrims’ tales, which generate
vicarious sensory experiences for the audience.
THE CULTURE OF VISIBILITY
To appreciate how Christian narratives created visual access to the

divine, it is worth considering similar techniques in Greco-Roman liter-
46. For example, Jerome, V. Pauli, 9 (Harvey, 365); HM 1.4–9; HR 3.22. For
a highly self-conscious study of Hindu pilgrimage as a sensory drama, see
E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1984), 245–87.
47. HM 1.19 (Russell, 54–55).
48. Patricia Cox Miller refers to these cues as “perceptual constructs,” that
is to say, rhetorical framing devices for representing sensory experience
(“Desert Asceticism and the ‘Body from Nowhere,’” JECS 2 [1994]: 137–53).
49. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 85–91.
ature. Christian writers shared with the larger Greco-Roman culture an

impulse to render the unseen visible. Roman rituals used words, gestures,
and images to conjure gods and venerable ancestors for the beholder.50
From panegyrics at the imperial processions to the magical formulas for
making the god appear, words generated visible presence.51 Even in a
culture whose gods claimed the ultimate control over visibility,52 the
conviction persisted that the proper use of language can bring unseen
realities before the eyes. Thus, while it remained a divine prerogative to
make the unseen gods visible, Greco-Roman writers claimed for them-
selves the power to render all other unseen realities visible. Orators, his-
torians, and novelists took up this challenge in ingenious ways.
50. As in the use of imagines, “wax models of faces” prominently displayed in

homes of the Roman elite, which were worn by actors at funeral processions so
that the deceased would be accompanied by “the entire company of his house
that had ever existed.” Pliny, Nat. hist. 35.2.6 (LCL 9:265). For an in-depth
study of the use of imagines, see now Harriet Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristo-
cratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), esp. 32–47, 97–106,
281–305. The literature on Roman spectacles and ceremonies is vast. Signifi-
cant for their integration of image, ritual, and visual perception are S. R. F.
Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), esp. 188–206; Sabine G. MacCormack, Art
and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981),
esp. 1–89; Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998); Carlin Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient
Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993), esp. 85–91.
51. On magic spells conjuring visibility, see esp. PGM III.166; IV.475–829
(“Mithras Liturgy”), IV.3221–26; PDM xiv.290–94. On formulas for invisibility,
PGM I.222–31, 247–62; VII.619–27. On the application of various ointments
to the eyes to prepare for a “god’s arrival,” see PDM xiv.140–44, xiv.820–23.
References are to The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic
Spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992).
52. For a general treatment of divine epiphany, see Robin Lane Fox, Pagans
and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 102–67.
The ability to evoke the unseen was taught at a very young age.
School exercises, or progymnasmata, and rhetorical handbooks instruc-
ted students to strive for descriptions so vivid that images would come
to the mind. This type of rhetorical device came under many names:
descriptio, ekphrasis, enargeia, hypotyposis, diatyposis, evidentia, repraesentio,
illustratio, demonstratio. Common to all of them was the idea that abun-
dant detail would awaken the audience’s mental senses and ultimately
visualize the event, person, or place being described.53 The rhetorician
Quintilian, for instance, took visibility to be the hallmark of fine ora-
tory, advising orators to aim “not so much to narrate as to exhibit,” so
that their speeches would appeal more to the eye than to the ear.54 And
Lysias was lauded for his magisterial use of enargeia, which Dionysius of
Halicarnassus described as “a certain power he has of conveying the
things he is describing to the senses of his audience, and it arises out of
his grasp of circumstantial detail.”55 There was no such thing as too
much detail, for in details the orators could “bring before the eyes all
the circumstances,” as Quintilian advised.56 Only in amassing details of
the parts, a rhetorical strategy advocated by Quintilian as well as later
orators, might the audience visualize the whole.57
53. On the importance of visualization for these descriptive techniques, see

Ann Vasaly, Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 20, 89–102; Liz James and Ruth Webb,
“‘To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places’: Ekphrasis and Art
in Byzantium,” Art History 14 (1991): 1–17, esp. 3. For a useful checklist of
rhetorical treatises, see George A. Kennedy, “Historical Survey of Rhetoric,” in
Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 B.C.–A.D. 400, ed. Stan-
ley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3–41, esp. 19–41.
54. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 6.2.32 (LCL 2:435); 8.3.62; 9.2.40. Cf. Hermo-
genes, Progymnasmata, 23.11 (Patillon, 148).
55. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lys. 7 (trans. S. Usher; LCL I:33).
56. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 6.2.31 (LCL 2:435).
57. “It is less effective to tell the whole news at once than to recount it detail
by detail” (Quintilian, Inst. orat. 8.3.69; LCL 3:247). The third-century Aquila
Romanus referred to this technique as leptologia, a serial description of many
Vivid description, or enargeia, relied on the audience’s capacity not

just to receive these mental images but also to expand them. In On the
Sublime, a first-century C.E. treatise attributed to Longinus, the author
recommended choosing images, or phantasiai, with sufficient emotional
and visual power to allow the audience to join in this conjuring.58 It is
ironic that only through an excess of detail might the listener become
inspired to conjure further, “imagin[ing] to himself other details that the
orator does not describe.”59 Quintilian underscored this distinction
between mere seeing and directly engaging these mental pictures:
“Vivid illustration (evidentia) . . . is something more than mere clear-
ness, since the latter merely lets itself be seen, whereas the former
thrusts itself (ostendit) upon our notice.”60 At the heart of this subtle dis-
tinction between images that are seen and images that make themselves
seen is a distinction between a passive and an active audience. Only if
the image was “thrust” on them would an audience engage in the visu-
alization Quintilian had in mind. The intent was to “make our audience
feel as if they were actual eyewitnesses to the scene [described].”61 Here
Quintilian links the pictorializing function of language with the idea of
presence (in rem praesentem). As “eyewitnesses” the audience was invited
not simply to watch the spectacle but rather to use their eyes to trigger
a range of sense perceptions and emotions. Only through visualizing
details (De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis 2, ed. Halm, 23.16–17, cited in

Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity [Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1989], 38–44, esp. 40–41). The aim, in Roberts’s apt
phrase, is to “create the impression of exhaustivity” (41).
58. Longinus, De subl. 15.1–2 (LCL 214–17).
59. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 8.3.64 (LCL 3:245); cf. 6.2.29–32, 10.7.15–16;
Vasaly, Representations, 95–96.
60. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 8.3.61 (LCL 4:245); cf. 4.2.63–64.
61. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 4.2.123 (LCL 2:117); on enargeia, see also
G. Zanker, “Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry,” Rheinisches Museum
für Philologie 124 (1981): 297–311; Alessandra Manieri, L’immagine poetica nella
teoria degli antichi: Phantasia ed enargeia (Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici
internazionali, 1998).
language could this emotional and synesthetic effect be achieved.62

Moreover, visibility, as a rhetorical effect, was believed to have profound
moral implications and consequences. Unless the orator could make
members of the audience see—and thereby feel—a distant event, any
moral lessons inherent in the story would be lost.63
The connection between visibility and morality is even more pro-
nounced in late ancient novels, which communicated the moral status of
characters through moments of visual perception. Beyond indulging a
penchant for pictorial description, novelists used visual language as a
code for both heroes and villains, humans and gods. Two novels in par-
ticular, Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon and Apuleius’s Metamor-
phoses (or The Golden Ass, as the work is better known), established a set
of visual cues by which readers could judge character and divinity. It is
worth examining some of these literary “moments of perception” in
greater detail.64
Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon was composed in the late sec-
ond century and continued to be copied into the fourth century.65 From
the moment the work opens, the reader is deluged with descriptions of
62. A point underscored by G. Zanker, who notes the close connection

between enargeia and the sense of sight (“Enargeia,” 297–301, 309–10). On the
multisensory dimensions of enargeia, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought:
Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998), 130–33, 148. Recent work on Roman historiog-
raphy has examined the function of rhetorical tropes of visibility; see, for exam-
ple, Gary B. Miles, Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1995), 10–11; Feldherr, Spectacle and Society, esp. 1–19; J. Davidson, “The
Gaze in Polybius’s Histories,” JRS 81 (1991): 10–24; Matthew Leigh, Lucan:
Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 10–15.
63. On Livy’s use of visualization to serve his ethical aims, see Feldherr,
Spectacle and Society, 9 and n. 26.
64. A term borrowed from Sarah Stanbury’s study of the poetics of visual
experience in the Gawain-poet (Seeing the Gawain-Poet: Description and the Act of
Perception [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991], esp. 2–8).
65. John J. Winkler, in Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. B. P. Reardon
paintings, landscapes, and the beloved.66 All this visibility overwhelms

the young hero, Clitophon, whose “eyes were filled to the brim with
pleasure” on arriving in Alexandria. The reader follows Clitophon’s eyes
as they try “to travel along every street” but fail.67 In a moment of exhil-
aration and exhaustion, Clitophon concedes his happy defeat: “Turning
round and round to face all the streets, I grew faint at the sight and at
last exclaimed, like a luckless lover, ‘Eyes, we have met our match!’ ”68
His readers could surely appreciate the sentiment.
In this context it is worth pausing to consider vision within a larger
set of sensory cues. Most striking about Achilles Tatius’s novel is the way
in which the use and misuse of the eyes distinguish the good characters
from the bad (who include a cast of unsavory interlopers). The good
lovers, Leucippe and Clitophon, make right use of their eyes. In this
typology, the gaze that is returned is the mark of authentic love. Thus,
Clitophon’s confidant, Clinias, deems him to be “lucky in love” pre-
cisely because the young lovers have endless opportunities to exchange
glances, “a kind of copulation at a distance,” according to Clinias.69
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 170. I follow Winkler’s transla-

tion and paragraph divisions.
66. Paintings: see, for example, 1.1; 3.6–8; 5.3; places: 1.1 (Sidon); 4.12
(Nile); 5.1 (Alexandria); lover’s gaze: 1.4–6, 19; 2.1–5. On the role of pictorial
description and spectacles in Achilles Tatius, see Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the
Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Pictorial Description in Heliodorus and
Achilles Tatius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 7–79.
67. Achilles Tatius, 5.1 (Winkler, 233).
68. Achilles Tatius, 5.1 (Winkler, 233); on other landscapes, cf. 4.12, 18. The
allusions are to Plato’s description of the lover’s gaze (Phaedrus 251 b, c). This
“flow of beauty” into the eye is echoed in several places, as in, 1.4, 9; 5.13. For a
useful list of citations to the “flow of beauty” topos in other ancient novels, see
M. B. Trapp, “Plato’s Phaedrus in Second-Century Greek Literature,” in Anto-
nine Literature, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 141–73, esp. 155;
cf. 172, esp. 6.iv.
69. Achilles Tatius, 1.9 (Winkler, 182–83); Clitophon’s relentless gaze is
mentioned again when he describes two episodes of visualization, one as Leu-
The weeping eye is another device by which Achilles Tatius exposes

both the true lover’s wisdom and the false suitor’s ignorance. In one
episode, Clitophon notes the irony in the fact that profound despair pre-
vents the eye from weeping.70 The teardrop is a key signifier in this tale
of mistaken appearances and false identities. One of the most poetic
moments in the novel comes when Clitophon, as narrator, observes how
the eyes of the beloved radiate when a suspended tear fills the eye.71 And
when Clitophon, the true lover, is finally brought to tears, he describes
in detail their intimate connection to the soul.72 The villain, in contrast,
weeps crocodile tears, as in Thersandros’s comic and grotesque display
of tears. When he cries at the sight of Leucippe’s genuine tears, he
“believes . . . he is in love.”73 Yet Thersandros finds neither catharsis nor
redemption in his tears; they only delude him further. Only the true
lover knows the eye and its ties to the true, inner self. And, as Thersan-
dros’s tears confirm, those who abuse the eyes will never have the object
of their desire.
Failure to use the eyes is also a mark of villainy. In this scheme, the
unrequited lover is one who fails to love with the eyes. Callisthenes, we
are told, is a “hearsay suitor,” the type who “fall[s] in love with a rumor
and suffer[s] with . . . [his] ears the agonies usually experienced by the
soul from love’s wound in the eye.”74 As these false lovers demonstrate,
unless love begins in the eye, it is doomed. It comes as no surprise to the
cippe sings (2.1) and the other when he reads her letter (5.15), as well as one
when the lovers are reunited (8.12). Cf. Charmides, the smitten general, who
stages a spectacle of his “Nile horse” for the sole purpose of finding a way to
stare at Leucippe (4.3). It is hardly a coincidence that as he describes its insa-
tiable appetite, she gazes at the animal, while he (animalistically) gazes at her.
70. Achilles Tatius, 3.11.
72. Achilles Tatius, 7.4; cf. 5.15.
74. Achilles Tatius, 2.13 (Winkler, 195); cf. Thersandros, who becomes
enamored with Leucippe solely from a verbal description of her beauty (6.4).
reader that false lovers, such as Melite (Clitophon’s new “betrothed”) and
Thersandros are those most frustrated by an unrequited gaze. Melite
complains to Clitophon that she would have been content “just to look at
[him], which is all [he has] been good for.”75 Likewise, Thersandros
pleads with Leucippe to look him in the eye rather than “let the loveli-
ness of [her] eyes spill onto the earth.” If she would only return his gaze,
he begs, her beauty might “flow into these eyes of mine.”76 Exasperated,
he uses his hands to achieve what her eyes refuse to do: he jerks her head
back by the hair and pulls up her chin to make her meet his gaze.77 That
Thersandros has to resort to physical force to obtain Leucippe’s gaze is
itself an indictment of the false lover who manipulates vision.
The right use of vision is exemplified by Clitophon, the lover who
receives and gives the gaze effortlessly. Clinias remarks on Clitophon’s
good fortune to have this reciprocated gaze. And even when the lovers
are separated, Clitophon recalls how he has managed to conjure Leu-
cippe’s image in his mind while reading a letter from her. Like a theur-
gist disclosing his methods, Clitophon teaches the reader to make those
who are absent present once again: “I scrutinized each word,” he says,
“as if seeing her through the letters . . . ma[king] the visible tangible (tÇ
flr∆mena »v dr∆mena).”78 More than a simple descriptive device, then, in
Achilles Tatius’s novel the eye functions as a moral marker, a tool by
which the author villainizes his villains and authenticates the true lovers.
Apuleius of Madauros, too, uses sensory language to shape both the
characters and the plot of his narrative. Indeed, the entire plot of The
Golden Ass can be understood as Lucius’s meanderings through the
realms of “blind Fortune” and “seeing Fortune.”79 Within this over-
75. Achilles Tatius, 5.25.4 (Winkler, 247).

79. Apuleius, Met. 5.9; 11.15. Here I follow P. G. Walsh’s translation,
Apuleius: The Golden Ass (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
arching visual paradigm, however, the dangers of visual experience are

equally pronounced: his insatiable voyeurism initiates and prolongs his
miserable odyssey as an ass.80 Yet his moments of greatest humiliation
and greatest joy come when he himself becomes a public spectacle.81
This visual drama about voyeurs and spectacles draws to a close when
“seeing Fortune” looks on him and he, in turn, sees Isis,82 as if to sug-
gest that the reciprocated gaze is the assurance of his deliverance.
Apuleius’s most instructive commentary on the senses, however, is
found in the Cupid and Psyche tale, a story within the story. To be sure,
many elements in the tale, about a mortal girl’s abduction to the
enchanted realm of a divine husband who “was invisible to her, but she
could touch and hear him,”83 mirror Lucius’s own plight, not least of
which is the theme of curiositas. Yet the tale can also be read indepen-
dently of the larger novel as a self-contained sensory drama, revolving
around competing worlds where sensory experience is differently
organized.
The contrast in sensory orders is marked from the outset of the story.
The reader soon learns that Psyche is virtually divinized by human
gazes: “People gazed on that girl’s human countenance when appeasing
the divine will of the mighty goddess.”84 That she also fell under the
80. A proclivity he comes to enjoy, even as an ass: “I refreshed my inquisi-

tive eyes by gazing through the open gate at the highly pleasing spectacle
afforded by the show” (10.29; Walsh, 212). The fact that the ass is occasionally
blindfolded accentuates his role as voyeur (e.g., 9.15–22). The centrality of
visual experience is also borne out by various characters’ names, such as Lucius
and Photis, which are derived from Latin and Greek words for light (lux and
␾‹v). And, as John J. Winkler perceptively remarks, the name Lucius is used
strictly for the man and not for the ass, lending further significance to the
“light-less” plight of the ass (Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of
Apuleius’s Golden Ass [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985], 149–51).
81. Apuleius, Met. 3.9–10, 12, 22; 10.29; 11.16, 24.
82. Apuleius, Met. 11.19, 24–25.
83. Apuleius, Met. 5.5 (Walsh, 82).
divine gaze of Venus is significant. Here is a goddess accustomed to hav-

ing a mirror continuously held before her face by dutiful attendants.85
Yet as a never-ending spectacle, the object of “all eyes” and of an “admi-
ration [that] is accorded to an exquisitely carved statue,” Psyche is mis-
erable.86 Her exile to the divine realm is a liberation from this gaze. The
reader can sense the transformation in Apuleius’s description of her new
setting: “You would know as soon as you entered that you were viewing
the bright and attractive retreat of some god.”87 In this place she finds
repose, and, above all, recovers the ability to look; the spectacle has
become the spectator.
Even as Apuleius serves up some of the lushest sensory descriptions
of the entire novel, the unseen remains equally important. The reader
soon discovers an alternative world where the senses operate and inter-
act differently. As Psyche gazes with delight upon her new surround-
ings, she encounters a disembodied voice,; the otherness of this sensory
order is clear.88 Amid the visual splendors of this place, Psyche must
adjust to the continuous presence of disembodied voices and sounds. As
Apuleius describes the scene, “She could see no living soul, and merely
heard words emerging from thin air: her serving-maids were merely
voices. When she had enjoyed the rich feast, a singer entered and per-
formed unseen, while another musician strummed a lyre which was like-
wise invisible. Then the harmonious voices of a tuneful choir struck her
ears, so that it was clear that a choral group was in attendance, though
no person could be seen.”89 While layering voice on voice, servant by
85. Apuleius, Met. 4.31.

88. “Haec ei summa cum voluptate visenti offert sese vox quaedam corporis
nuda” (5.2). Even in this brief sentence, Apuleius holds two modes of sensory
awareness in tension by contrasting an embodied seeing, qualified by the term
voluptas, connoting sensory pleasure, with an aural experience of a disembodied
voice (vox corporis nuda).
89. Apuleius, Met. 5.3 (Walsh, 81); her sisters also enjoy the invisible hospi-
servant, he crowds the space with “invisible” and “unseen” presences.

Sight, however, is not eliminated. After all, Psyche is not struck blind
(an accident commonly associated with epiphany in the ancient imagi-
nation).90 Instead, every sense is engaged, while sight alone is redirected
and thereby redefined.
Psyche is permitted to see her surroundings but never the presence
of those who share them with her. We are told how her eye delighted in
the opulent stones and gems on which she stood, and the luminous
doors, colonnade, and rooms that glimmered even when “the sun
refused to shine.”91 It is hard to miss the irony of her situation: she may
look in every corner of the mansion, but the closest she comes to meet-
ing the eye of another being is when she sees silver wall reliefs of “beasts
and wild cattle [who] met the gaze of those who entered there.”92 Even
more ironic is the fact that the invisible beings demand absolute control
of her eyes. Thus the disembodied voice asks, “Why . . . do you gaze
open-mouthed?”93 And, more than once, her husband enjoins her “not
. . . even to set eyes” on her distraught sisters or “catch a glimpse of
them.”94
tality: “All this music soothed their spirits, with the sweetest tunes as they lis-
tened, though no human person stood before them” (5.15; Walsh, 88).
90. As in Athena’s blinding of Tiresias after he saw her bathing: “Whoso-
ever shall behold any of the immortals, when the god himself chooses not, at a
heavy price shall he behold” (Callimachus, Hymn 5.100–102 [LCL; A. W. Mair,
trans., pp. 119–21]). For an insightful discussion of this hymn and the problem
of divine visibility, see Nicole Loraux, “What Tiresias Saw,” in The Experiences
of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man, trans. Paula Wissing (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995), 211–26. Christian preachers and commen-
tators also commented on blindness as proof of epiphany, as in Ephrem the Syr-
ian’s interpretation of Saul’s blinding (Sermo de Domino nostro, 30.4 ⫽ FC 308–9;
cf. Acts of the Apostles 9:1–19).
94. Apuleius, Met. 5.5 (Walsh, 82); cf. 5.12.
As restrictive as the divine bridegroom’s injunctions may be, Psyche

enjoys a more intense experience of all her other senses, finding beauty
through smell and touch. Psyche’s aesthetic reorientation is most pro-
nounced as she interacts with her invisible (and nameless) bridegroom:
“I beg you by these locks of yours, which with their scent of cinnamon
dangle all around your head, by your cheeks as soft and smooth as my
own, by your breast which diffuses hidden heat.”95 Yet without vision
and visibility her world remains a “blessed prison.”96
Even if visibility is not inherent to beauty, it is necessary to Psyche’s
ability to remain embodied. The nostalgia for visibility is most pro-
nounced when Psyche shines the lamp on her husband as he sleeps:
“Even the lamplight was cheered and brightened on seeing him.” And
once again, Psyche is “awe-struck at this wonderful vision,” and “gazed
repeatedly on the beauty of that divine countenance” and the “flashing
brilliance . . . of dewy wings.”97 It is significant that until he becomes
visible, the husband is nameless. Only at this luminous moment in the
tale is the name Cupid first mentioned.
The aftermath of this encounter offers further sensory twists. For
only at his betrayal, after Psyche sees his body, does Cupid fly away,
leaving Psyche to “watch . . . her husband’s flight as far as her eyes
allowed.”98 Having wreaked their damage, her eyes gaze helplessly on a
vanishing body. One is left to wonder if visibility causes her to gain the
divine body or to lose it.
In grieving the loss of Cupid, Psyche then joins another sensory
order, a world where the inanimate, yet visible, bursts into speech.
Reeds prophesy; waters speak; and even a tower consoles her.99 Still, the
body she has lost is ultimately her own, as Apuleius understands the

97. Apuleius, Met. 5.22 (Walsh, 92–93).
99. Apuleius, Met. 6.12, 14, 17.
flight of the sensory body: “The hopelessness of the situation turned

Psyche to stone. She was physically present, but her senses deserted
her.”100 Once again Psyche becomes the statue she had been when
humans worshipped her as Venus. This time, however, she is the object
not of many gazes but of a single divine gaze, the “steady gaze of benev-
olent Providence.”101
When Cupid and Psyche are eventually reconciled, the marriage
feast marks Psyche’s reembodiment. The musicians who serenade the
couple are visible, as are the Graces who fill the room with sweet aro-
mas. Vision, which threatened to undermine the union, in fact solidifies
it. To mark the reunion, Cupid and Psyche eventually welcome their
firstborn, appropriately named Voluptas, or “Pleasure,” a name reminis-
cent of the embodied gaze (cum voluptate visenti) with which Psyche
inspected her divine surroundings at the opening of the tale.102
The visual cues in Leucippe and Clitophon and The Golden Ass suggest
the power of narrative to enhance the interpretive possibilities of the
human body as a sensory body. Attuned to what characters perceive and
how they use their eyes, the reader becomes fluent in the language of
the eyes. Through this literature the audience becomes “all eyes,” capa-
ble of detecting false lovers, vindicating genuine ones, and even discov-
ering how the recovery of the sensory body can unite the human and the
divine. These two novels exemplify the double impulse not only to visu-
alize but also to render judgments based on those visual cues. More than
the rhetorical handbooks, the novels demonstrate the power of visual
detail as vivid description. By this enargeia, the reader is primed to

102. Apuleius, Met. 6.24; cf. 5.1. In a separate context, Michel Foucault
offers this gloss on the term: voluptas is the sort of pleasure “whose origin is to
be placed outside us and in objects whose presence we cannot be sure of: a
pleasure, therefore, which is precarious in itself, undermined by the fear of loss,
and to which we are drawn by the force of a desire that may or may not find sat-
isfaction . . . [a] kind of violent, uncertain, and conditional pleasure” (The Care of
pierce thin appearances and probe the sensory dramas that enliven and
expose the characters. Such attentiveness, cultivated through novels,
rhetoric, and history, suggests how keenly Christian pilgrims might
have read the characters they encountered in pilgrims’ testimonies.
SENSING THE BIBLICAL PAST
I focus on three tendencies or impulses that shaped the spirituality of

pilgrims to the living: exoticism, by which I mean the desire to know the
marvels of distant lands; sensory engagement, the conviction that the
physical senses, and particularly vision, could perceive divine presence;
and biblical realism, a desire to participate in sacred moments from the
biblical past. All three impulses are found in both the History of the
Monks in Egypt and the Lausiac History. Both travelogues can be under-
stood as hybrid works, a combination of travelers’ tales and biography
that blend monastic anecdotes and miracle accounts. This nexus is cru-
cial for discerning pilgrims’ expectations as well as for understanding
the affinities between pilgrimage and other devotional practices.
The impulse to exoticize monasticism had roots in ancient travel
writing. Chapter 2 is concerned with tracing the affinities between the
Christian travelogues and pagan descriptions of distant lands. Pilgrims
borrowed and adapted narrative devices found in exotic travel writing to
represent their experiences to their reading and listening audiences.
They did not seek to represent all the varieties of monastic organiza-
tions; rather, they constructed monasticism as a thoroughly biblical
undertaking.103 In depicting the monastic world as a charmed biblical
land, these writers developed various ways to engage their readers. It
the Self, vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley [New York: Vin-
tage, 1986], 66). All this strikes me as an apt, if unwitting, summary of Psyche’s
ordeal. Cf. s.v. “voluptās” in Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1982), 2102b.
103. James Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and
Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–96. See esp. 291–93
was not enough to spice their works with biblical allusions; their narra-
tives were crafted to allow pilgrims to engage the biblical world.
Christians developed their own poetics of travel writing, that is to
say, the tropes, conventions, and structures through which to report
their experiences. Three tropes, in particular, gave expression to pil-
grims’ experiences: distance, marvel, and the sacred past. I examine how
the authors of the Christian travelogues positioned Egyptian monasti-
cism both spatially and temporally at a comfortable distance from the
reader’s world. By these displacements, pilgrim-authors assumed the
license to portray monastics as “living monuments” of the biblical past.
The effect of these tropes, however, extends far beyond their stylis-
tic, descriptive, or retrospective dimensions. Closer examination of
these descriptive tools reveals the perceptual force to shape an audi-
ence’s expectations. The travelogues simultaneously express and gener-
ate pilgrims’ experiences, rather than simply transcribe the places and
people visited. Far from stenographic, their reports are, rather, literary
creations, in the sense that they are selective representations of experi-
ence.104 Whenever a traveler encounters something strange or unfamil-
iar, she cannot help but domesticate it into familiar categories. In the act
of describing experience, then, travel writing invariably constructs reali-
ties.105 To reach a deeper understanding of pilgrims’ reports as prospec-
tive devices, the investigator must pay careful attention to the language,
arrangement, and the telling omissions that make up a pilgrim’s report.
Attention to the literary texture of these works yields a richer under-
for a discussion of what Goehring refers to as the “desertification” of Egypt. Id.,

“Withdrawing from the Desert: Pachomius and the Development of Village
Monasticism in Upper Egypt,” HTR 89 (1996): 267–85. Goehring highlights a
literary polarization of desert and city.
104. See Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic Euro-
pean Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 2–4.
105. François Hartog demonstrates this for ancient Greek travel writing in
The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History,
trans. Janet Lloyd (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
standing of pilgrims’ narrative patterns. Those patterns, in turn, allow

the interpreter to detect the religious sensibilities behind pilgrimage to
the living.
Yet, as the analysis of the pagan novels and rhetorical handbooks sug-
gests, some of the most instructive uses of those visualizing tropes
appear outside the corpus of pilgrims’ testimonies that have survived.
Rather than limit the investigation to hagiographic, monastic, and epis-
tolary writings that explicitly mention pilgrims to the living, my study
also examines narratives that had the potential to shape pilgrims’ per-
ceptions of their sacred destinations.
Looking beyond pilgrims’ reports, then, chapter 3 focuses on Chris-
tian works describing travel to a divine and somewhat embodied pres-
ence. In particular, I analyze the traveler’s perspective in otherworldly
journeys, apocalypses, and spiritual treatises on the soul’s journey
toward God: that is to say, stories with the potential to affect how pil-
grims perceived the holy men and women they encountered. The reso-
nances between the “real” journeys that pilgrims describe and the
“imagined” journeys recounted in otherworldly and fictionalized
accounts are striking in their portrayal of the holy body.
This analysis expands the literary resources by which to interpret and
reconstruct pilgrims’ behaviors and dispositions. When other types of
religious and imaginative literature enter the discussion, the pilgrims’
spirituality comes into sharper focus. Such connections are easier to
establish for pilgrims like Jerome, who both created an idealized pilgrim
and left a record of his own travels.106 It stands to reason, then, that
other types of travel narratives shaped pilgrims’ renderings of their own
experiences. Thus fabulous journeys provide an important tool for
interpreting the experiential dimensions of any pilgrims’ account.
From allegorical journeys, I return to Christian descriptions of phys-
ical pilgrimage. Chapter 4 focuses on pilgrims to the holy places and
106. The same might also be said for Palladius, who found his ur-pilgrim in
the letters of the Apostle Paul, a mimetic relation I discuss in chapter 2.
how they construed their sensory engagement with the holy sites. Sig-
nificant here is their understanding of the “eye of faith,” an expression
that stood for a broad range of visual and visionary experiences, includ-
ing instances of conjuring and participating in events from the biblical
past. Beyond demonstrating the primacy of sight at the holy places, this
chapter also asks what qualities of seeing constitute the “eye of faith.”
Why fourth-century pilgrims associated their most transformative
moments with vision becomes a more complex problem when one con-
siders the increasing use of touch in accounts from later centuries. What
at first appears as a rupture or shift in the use of the senses at the holy
places turns out to be a radical realization of cultural assumptions about
the materiality of vision in late antiquity, a notion with profound impli-
cations for pilgrims’ relation to the past.
Chapter 5 continues this investigation of pilgrims’ visuality with a
detailed examination of their renditions of the physical appearance of
holy people, in particular their detailed descriptions of facial appear-
ance. In keeping with the earlier discussion of monuments, this discus-
sion nuances that analogy by examining the ascetic face, in isolation
from the body, as the real monument. Much like the ancient novelists,
who clued their readers to the interpretive possibilities in the eyes, pil-
grims to the living reveal the interpretive possibilities of the ascetic face.
In particular, these pilgrims appropriated and adapted the larger cul-
ture’s assumptions about the intimate relation between visible features
of the face and inner states, a set of assumptions that, independently of
Christianity, gave rise to techniques of face-reading, or physiognomy.
The remainder of the chapter probes the significance of the ascetic face
in the broader context of ancient fascination with reading bodies.
Against this background of ancient physiognomic theory, pilgrims’
rather formulaic descriptions of the ascetic face take on a new meaning.
As a sensory analysis of these travelogues demonstrates, pilgrims
forged a Christian visual piety that drew on ancient physiognomy and
optical theories as a way to articulate a mode of biblical realism that
could be experienced away from the holy places. In their Christianized,
and, specifically, biblicized physiognomy, pilgrims devised ways of

“reading” the ascetic face for access to the biblical past. By expressing
religious experience through facial language, pilgrims communicated to
their audiences that seeing holy people was an opportunity to partici-
pate in the biblical past.
Those intersecting themes of pilgrimage, the biblical past, and the
power of vision converge most succinctly in a brief episode reported in
the Life of Symeon the Holy Fool. After completing their pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, Symeon and his companion, John, spotted monasteries in
the Judean desert. They paused to consider what lay in the distance. As
Leontius reports their conversation, “John saw the monasteries all
around the holy Jordan, and said . . . to Symeon, ‘Do you know the ones
who dwell in these houses which are before us?’ The other said to him,
‘Who are they?’ And John said, ‘Angels of God.’ Symeon said to him in
wonder, ‘Can we see them?’ ‘If we will become like them, yes,’ said the
other.”107 Although this seventh-century tale postdates the pilgrims I
discuss here, it communicates the powerful notion that to become was
to see. What exactly they wanted to see, monks or angels, however,
remains ambiguous. Even the reader does not find out, for John and
Symeon’s immediate impulse was to remount their horses and continue
their journey home. Their response is telling. As tantalizing as it was to
see the monks/angels and thereby continue to see the biblical past they
had just experienced in Jerusalem, that transformation was premature,
suggesting that only as Symeon’s ascetic career unfolded might he truly
see and become.
In addition to conveying the transformative power of vision, this
story serves as a useful reminder that pilgrims’ experiences were learned
experiences, patterned on the biblical stories, pilgrims’ reports, imagi-
native literature, and monastic hagiography that late antique Christians
encountered. The final chapter explores the implications of those sensi-
bilities for interpreting other aspects of Christian piety, and specifically
107. Life of Symeon the Holy Fool, 1 (Ryden, 124; Krueger, 134).
the veneration of relics and icons. I focus on the intersection of visual

and visionary experience in these practices, suggesting an affective
engagement similar to that claimed by pilgrims. All this serves to open
up new ways of understanding the intensity of visual experience that
shaped late antique piety, and not just pilgrimage. These later develop-
ments suggest a broader context for understanding Christian attitudes
to the beholder. In a time when moral teachers also feared the eye,
warning Christians that to see is to have,108 pilgrims opened up new
possibilities for this precious sense, showing instead that to see was to be.
108. For example, “What the eye sees it appropriates” (Pseudo-Shenoute,

On Christian Behaviour, 40.6–7, ed. K. H. Kuhn [CSCO, 206–7/Scriptores
Coptici, 29–30; Louvain: CSCO, 1960], 30:23).
t wo
Desert Ascetics
and Distant Marvels
The Historia as Travelogue
What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality,

the land of poets and fabulists, of doubt and obscurity.
Plutarch, V. Thes. 1 (LCL, 1:3)
To those accustomed to the thick descriptions that enliven modern

travel writing, both the History of the Monks and the Lausiac History may
appear rather thin. Their authors took little interest in mapping the
strange lands they encountered or writing guidebooks for future pil-
grims. As the vexing silences suggest, that job was left to the cartogra-
phers, gazetteers, liturgical specialists, and travel guides of the day. In
these pilgrims’ accounts one finds little information about the landscape
or any travel companions.1 And although written in the first person,
1. On the interpretive implications of “scenic” or “social” emptiness, see

Mary B. Campbell, “ ‘The Object of One’s Gaze’: Landscape, Writing, and
Early Medieval Pilgrimage,” in Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Explo-
ration and Imagination, ed. Scott D. Westrem (New York: Garland, 1991), 3–15,
esp. 4–5; and Blake Leyerle, “Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pil-
grimage Narratives,” JAAR 64 (1996): 119–43, esp. 125–26.
35
36 / Desert Ascetics and Distant Marvels
neither work could be called introspective or personal. There are no

“interior castles” to speak of. Both works face outward, to the surfaces
of Egyptian monasticism, from the vast, desert landscape to the furrows
of a monk’s brow.
The “surfaces” of monasticism, however, are puzzling. As with other
pilgrims’ reports, one finds place-names, a few geographical coordi-
nates, and names of holy men and women visited. Yet there are also
some enigmatic details—monks with angelic faces and a reputation for
miracles so strong that, at times, the author cuts short an eyewitness
account in order to record hearsay about miracles a particular ascetic
once performed.2
What can these odd figures of speech and narrative choices tell us
about pilgrims’ experiences? To recent literary historians, these puz-
zling expressions are not empty tropes but symptoms of an author’s
efforts to grapple with the otherness of Egyptian monastic culture. A
better understanding of the nature and function of travel writing can
lend insight into pilgrims’ perceptions and offer the modern interpreter
access to their representations of their experiences, that is to say the
stylized and symbolic language through which they simultaneously
recorded and interpreted their memories.3 If taken as literary creations
2. HM 6.1; 8.24, 26.

3. Recent studies of medieval pilgrims’ reports offer fresh perspectives on
the poetics of travel writing: Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other
World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1988); and Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage
Narratives and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
On rhetorical analysis, see Ruth Morse, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages:
Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), esp. 15–84. On the value of a literary approach for uncovering pilgrims’
experiences, see Barbara Nimri Aziz, “Personal Dimensions of the Sacred Jour-
ney: What Pilgrims Say,” Religious Studies 23 (1987): 247–61, esp. 247–48. For
literary patterns in late antique pilgrims’ descriptions of the Holy Land, see
Leyerle, “Landscape as Cartography”; Laurie Douglass, “A New Look at the
Itinerarium Burdigalense, “ JECS 4 (1996): 313–34; Campbell, Witness, 15–45.
Desert Ascetics and Distant Marvels / 37
and not factual records, such as a census or tax report, pilgrims’ writings
can reveal the world as it was imagined and experienced.4 Those sensi-
bilities emerge when one pays close attention to the narrative patterns,
repetitions, and omissions in pilgrim narratives. As the medievalist
Donald Howard once put it, “Travel itself is ‘imaginative’: travels are
fictions to the extent that the traveler sees what he wants or expects to
see, which is often what he has read.”5
Closer attention to the literary texture of pilgrims’ writings reveals
their worldview. One questions less the veracity of these accounts and
exposes more how travel writing becomes an act of cultural translation
whereby travelers use the language they already know to describe what
they struggle to know. In this groping representation, pilgrims may draw
on familiar stories and prior expectations, many of which are derived
from other texts. Indeed, the consequences of that re-presentation and
misrepresentation are quite complex. As Edward Said and others have
demonstrated of the modern period, travel writing often perpetuates
political and ideological programs.6 The importance of these studies
notwithstanding, pilgrims’ writings also reflect shifting religious sensi-
bilities. Thus, even the most plot-poor and stilted accounts can reveal
pilgrims’ perceptions of space, of time, and of the transcendent possibil-
ities of pilgrimage. With a better understanding of how travel writers
4. Campbell, Witness, 4–6.

5. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims, 10.
6. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), esp. 54–73. On
Pausanias’s Guide to Greece as a response to Roman imperial power in the second
century C.E., see Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art
from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 125–55. For the colonialist dynamics of modern travel writing, see, for
instance, Mary W. Helm, Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowl-
edge, and Geographical Distance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988),
esp. 22–33; Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the
Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989), esp. 1–24; Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcul-
turation (New York: Routledge, 1992), esp. 6–9.
chose to tell their stories, we gain insight into the workings of the pil-
grims’ imagination.
Literary approaches to travel writing also illumine how ancient pil-
grims and their audiences perceived holy people. The History of the
Monks in Egypt and the Lausiac History employ familiar conventions of
exotic travel writing as a means to portray monasticism to monks and lay
people in different regions. If read as pilgrims’ writings, rather than as
monastic chronicle, both works reveal the fascination that the ascetic
movement held for outsiders. What pilgrims’ texts show us—in a way
that sayings collections, rules, and monastic biography do not—are the
ideals and idealizations that drew many pilgrims to seek out desert asce-
tics. Since few interpreters have identified the historia as a type of pil-
grim’s narrative, the first part of my discussion focuses on the affinities
shared by these early fifth-century anthologies and travel writing. The
remainder of the discussion explores how particular narrative techniques
both exoticized and domesticated foreign monasticism for distant readers.
THE HISTORIAI AS TRAVEL WRITING
In a recent study of ancient historiography, Glen Bowersock warns,

“With works of imaginative literature there is nothing more ruinous for
historical understanding than genre theory or a mindless search for
antecedents, origins, and distant parallels.”7 Indeed, the historiai can be
understood as works of imaginative literature, presenting a distant and
charmed world to their audiences. And yet, without falling victim to the
paralysis Bowersock describes, questions of genre are worth revisiting
precisely because they reveal the shared assumptions between authors
and audiences.8
7. G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1994), 14.
8. For a clear overview of theories of literary genre and their heuristic
import, see Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with
Like most travel writing, the historia is “the beggar of literary forms.”9
The hybrid character of these reports is already apparent in the History of
the Monks in Egypt. This work, from the opening years of the fifth cen-
tury, combines biographical vignettes, novellas, anecdotes, and travel
impressions to create a regional panorama of monastic culture. Within a
half-century, two other writers borrowed this format, using a series of
brief sketches to describe individual holy people or various monastic
communities they encountered in other regions. In 420, Palladius,
bishop of Helenopolis, recounted his visits among Palestinian and
Egyptian ascetics in a work known as the Lausiac History. And in the 440s,
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, transposed the genre to another region,
finding in the brief notice a convenient venue for parading the heroes
and heroines of Syrian asceticism. Despite their regional focus, all three
works appealed to a larger, international audience. And their relatively
rapid translation into Latin expanded their readership considerably.10
Although most readers today recognize the presence of travel tales in
the historiai, few have regarded them as pilgrims’ texts, for several pos-
sible reasons. First, to many moderns, pilgrimage is exclusively about
physical holy places, an assumption that eliminates other types of desti-
nations, such as people or otherworldly places. Yet even if one adopts a
Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),

esp. 26–81, 109–27; Mary Gerhart, “Generic Studies: Their Renewed Impor-
tance in Religious and Literary Interpretation,” JAAR 45 (1977): 309–25.
9. The phrase is from a modern editor, Bill Buford, quoted in Jim Miller,
“Literature’s New Nomads,” Newsweek, August 18, 1989, 50.
10. The historia, as a genre, invited numerous translations, conflations,
expansions, and abridgements. On the intersecting textual history of the Lausiac
History and the History of the Monks, see Cuthbert Butler, The Lausiac History of
Palladius (Texts and Studies, 6, parts 1–2; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1904) 1:6–22. The relation between the Greek and Latin versions of the
HM is discussed in André-Jean Festugière, “Le problème littéraire de l’Historia
monachorum,” Hermes 83 (1955): 257–84; cf. Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Author-
more inclusive definition of pilgrimage,11 the biographical emphasis in

the historiai is undeniable. As the goals of these journeys, holy people
can indeed eclipse the journey itself. In surveys of patristic literature the
historiai are usually mentioned in discussions of ascetic literature and
described as “tales of the monks.”12 The fact that they were composed
by pilgrims is noted but rarely enters into a consideration of the text’s
genre. To these modern interpreters, travel appears incidental to the
biographical purpose of the works.
The historiai indeed bear a strong resemblance to ancient biographi-
cal anthologies, most notably pagan collections about famous philoso-
phers, such as the anthologies by Philostratus or Eunapius.13 An even
closer parallel can be found in Christian writings, such as monastic col-
lections of sayings, or apophthegmata, some of which are arranged
according to their attribution to famous monastic teachers. Topography
and biography come even closer in a Christianized work known as the
Lives of the Prophets. If one accepts David Satran’s persuasive analysis, the
work suited early Byzantine Christian efforts to connect Bible, place,
and holy person.14
What sets the historiai apart from these other collections is the pres-
ence of a traveler whose first-person narrative all but dissolves intellec-
ity, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1978), 16 n. 27; and more recently, C. P. Bammel, “Problems of the His-
toria Monachorum,” JTS 47 (1996): 92–104. For a useful summary of the
debates, see Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1983), 38–39.
11. For example, “a journey undertaken by a person in quest of a place or a
state that he or she believes to embody a valued ideal” (Alan Morinis, “Intro-
duction,” in Sacred Journey: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, ed. Alan Morinis
[Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1992], 4).
12. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 38–44.
13. Pierre Canivet, Le monachisme syrien selon Théodoret de Cyr (Théologie
historique 42; Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), 65–66, 68–69, 79–82.
14. David Satran, Biblical Prophets in Byzantine Palestine (Leiden: Brill, 1995),
60–63, 101–10, esp. 107.
tual genealogies and institutional concerns, locating the holy person

squarely in traveled space. Whereas the philosophical anthologies
traced a lineage of intellectual traditions, the historiai followed a traveled
route.15 As extra-monastic, itinerant observers, the authors of the early
historiai took little interest in the more localized master-disciple rela-
tionships found in apophthegmata.16 The narrator of a historia remains a
present voice, more self-conscious than the hagiographer or disciple
writing in the self-effacing third person. Although he occasionally dis-
appears from view as he recounts tales and journeys by others, the
author’s “rhetorical presence” as a traveler is central to the shape of the
narrative.17
To appreciate the historia’s roots in travel writing, one can look to
later anthologies that omitted the traveler’s presence altogether in
favor of a thoroughly biographical genre. With the appearance of the
Historia religiosa in the 440s, Theodoret departed from the geographi-
cal plan of earlier works and arranged his regional work chronologi-
cally, beginning with reminiscences of deceased ascetics, then proceed-
ing to his contemporaries, a scheme that undercuts the possibility of
any continuous travel report.18 Although he mentions his own travel
experiences intermittently, they have no effect on the shape of the
work. The difference of emphases between the History of the Monks and
Theodoret’s work are most apparent in the opening lines of any notice.
Whereas a place-name provides the author of the History of the Monks
with an opportunity to describe his journey, Theodoret appears more
15. Eunapius, for instance, connects his lives by means of teacher-disciple

relations, as in Vitae Sophistarum (LCL, 377).
16. Canivet, Monachisme syrien, 79–82. Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-
Molinghen, Théodoret de Cyr (SC 234 [1977]), 13.
17. On this term see Campbell, Witness, 15.
18. Theodoret mentions three organizing principles at key transitions:
chronology (dead saints, then “those still living” [HR 21.1]); setting (desert
saints, then ascetics in “inhabited lands” [HR 4.1; Canivet, Monachisme syrien,
83–86, 147–52]); and gender (male saints, then female saints [HR 29.1]).
interested in the political history of a place.19 Yet, as in the earlier

anthologies, Theodoret retains a regional focus, grounding famous
ascetics in the religious landscape.20
The sixth century marks several important changes in the shape of
the historia. With a growing interest in hagiographic anthologies for
monastic use, the travel-based historia soon disappeared. Later antholo-
gies severed all ties to travel writing, a shift in focus found in the Lives of
the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus (507–589) and the Spiritual
Meadow by John Moschus (ca. 550–619), both of which are primarily
hagiographic in structure and emphasis.21 By the tenth century, collec-
19. For example, HR 1.2; 2.1; 5.1; cf. 21.2, on Theodoret’s decision to place
James first among the living saints.
20. For example, Theodosius (HR 10.1–2), whose manual labors (plowing,
sowing, building docks) transformed the larger physical surroundings well
beyond his small cell; cf. James of Cyrrhestica (HR 21.4–5; Price, 134), whose
residency on the mountain “made it distinguished and revered, although for-
merly it was totally undistinguished and sterile. So great is the blessing it is con-
fidently believed to have now received that the soil on it has been exhausted by
those coming from all sides to carry it off for their benefit. Living in this place,
he is observed by all comers.” Cf. the role of narrative in “recharging” the holy
dirt following the death of Saint Symeon the Younger, as suggested by
V. Déroche’s analysis of the Life, “Quelques interrogations à propos de la Vie de
Saint Syméon le Jeune,” Eranos 94 (1996): 63–83, esp. 78–82.
21. John Moschus, Pratum spirituale. Text: PG 87, cols. 2851–3112. Trans-
lated by John Wortley, The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos, CS 139 (Kalama-
zoo: Cistercian, 1992). See H. Chadwick, “John Moschus and his Friend
Sophronius the Sophist,” JTS n.s. 25 (1974): 41–74, esp. 41–49. John of Eph-
esus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, ed. and trans. E. W. Brooks, Patrologia Orientalis
17–19 (Paris, 1923–25). On the genre of these works, see Susan Ashbrook
Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the East-
ern Saints (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 34–37. Bernard
Flusin suggests that Cyril of Scythopolis (ca. 525–558) conceived of his
seven vitae of Palestinian monks as forming part of an anthology (Miracle et his-
toire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983],
34–35, 70).
tions of short biographies of saints, or, synaxaria, complete the hagio-

graphic trajectory of the historia.22 Thus what began as a hybrid genre
combining travel writing and hagiography eventually became a hagio-
graphic genre with secondary travel motifs.
Given this shift toward biography in later monastic collections, it is
all the more important to recognize the earlier historiai as personal nar-
ratives about travel. Their personal nature is reflected in the way each
author organized material, choosing to gather anecdotes according to
the places where they were received.23 Occasionally the author turns to
literary sources to expand his description of a particular place.24 Indeed,
this borrowing sometimes disrupts the itinerary, leading some to cast
doubts on the historicity of the account.25 But even when specific details
of the itinerary have been called into question, few scholars today would
argue that the Lausiac History or the History of the Monks are pure fabri-
cations.
22. “Synaxarion,” in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander P. Kazh-

dan et al. (3 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3:1991.
23. See, for example, D. F. Buck, “The Structure of the Lausiac History”
Byzantion 46 (1976): 292–307.
24. Eva Schulz-Flügel, “The Function of the Apophthegmata in Vitae and
Itineraria, “ SP 18 (1989): 281–91, esp. 284. The fact of literary borrowing,
however, would not have prevented ancient audiences from recognizing the his-
toria as an itinerarium. Gabriel Bunge detects traces of a travel memoir Palladius
penned several years prior to composing the Lausiac History (“Palladiana I:
Introduction aux fragments coptes de L’histoire lausiaque,” Studia Monastica 32
[1990]: 79–129, esp. 119–224).
25. For example, P. Peeters, “Une vie copte de S. Jean de Lycopolis,”
Analecta Bollandiana 54 (1936): 359–83. On the larger debate, see Young, From
Nicaea to Chalcedon, 40–41. Recognizing the use of literary sources in Palladius’s
travelogue, E. D. Hunt offers this helpful perspective: “The essential facts of his
own experience were enriched with tales form the popular tradition to produce
a work at once edifying and authentic” (“Palladius of Helenopolis: A Party and
Its Supporters in the Church of the Late Fourth Century,” JTS n.s. 24 [1973]:
456–80, esp. 458–60).
Leaving aside the difficult distinction between fact and fiction,26 a

more meaningful question is whether the early historiai were likely to be
read as travel guides or travel accounts. Ancient Christians, like readers
today, understood the difference between a guide to a journey and a nar-
rative about a journey.27 Jerome implied this distinction when he warned
his readers that his description of Paula’s travels was not to be taken as a
travel guide (odoeporicon).28 He promised no practical travel advice,
guiding the reader less toward the actual places and more toward Paula’s
experiences once there. Jerome’s invitation to imagine the journey was
hardly novel to ancient audiences, who frequently read about journeys
without any intention of ever undertaking the travel themselves.29 So it
was for Palladius, whose aim was to edify his patron, Lausus, rather than
offer a map for a physical journey.
Other factors, too, prevent modern readers from understanding the
historiai as travel books. At first blush, the abundance of miracles in the
historiai seems alien to any form of travel writing. It makes historians
shudder: Derwas Chitty cautions readers of the History of the Monks,
“The work is full of wonders, and the writer was extremely gullible.”30
Even among generous interpreters, who appeal to the historical or cul-
26. See now Claudia Rapp, “Storytelling as Spiritual Communication in

Early Greek Hagiography: The Use of Diegesis,” JECS 6 (1998): 431–48,
esp. 443–44. Cf. Campbell, Witness, 2, 4.
27. As one modern travel editor explains the distinction, “Travel books,
unlike guidebooks, contain little useful information. They are meant to be read,
not pillaged for practical tips. Some of the best ones describe trips that few
readers will ever take.” Gary Fisketjon, quoted in Miller, “Literature’s New
Nomads,” 50.
28. Jerome, Ep. 108.8.1.
29. A classic example of the fabricated journey from a later period is Man-
deville’s Travels; on Mandeville’s use of literary sources, see Iain Macleod Hig-
gins, Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
30. Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1966), 51.
tural context of the work, the scholarly embarrassment over the promi-
nence of miracles is apparent.31 Benedicta Ward moved this debate over
miracles in an important direction when she explored the theological
significance of marvels as a form of biblical typology.32 As Ward
reminds modern historians, miracles had a symbolic function in the His-
tory of the Monks. A miracle, particularly one reminiscent of Jesus, served
as a potent device for authenticating the sanctity of the protagonist.
What Ward’s analysis does not entertain, however, is the profusion of
miracles and marvels in ancient travel writing. Ever since Odysseus
landed on the island of the Phaiacians, storytellers have delighted arm-
chair travelers with tales of distant places and mysterious events. In the
fifth century B.C.E. writers such as Herodotus and a court physician
named Ctesias of Cnidos pushed the boundaries of the geographical
imagination with their accounts of exotic peoples, strange beasts, and
the marvels of India.33 This fascination with the foreign and fantastic
resurged in Hellenistic times with the appearance of paradoxographies,
catalogues of bizarre phenomena verging on the miraculous.34
Imaginary journeys also associated distant places with marvels. The
title of Antonius Diogenes’s fantastic journey, The Wonders beyond
31. See, for example, Young, who calls on modern readers to make “some
allowance for a tendency to exaggeration and idealization” in reading historiai
(From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 41).
32. Benedicta Ward, “Introduction,” in The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The
Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, trans. Norman Russell (Kalamazoo: Cistercian,
1980), 39–46, expanded in Benedicta Ward, “Signs and Wonders: Miracles in
the Desert Tradition,” SP 18 (1982): 539–42; repr. in id., Signs and Wonders:
Saints, Miracles and Prayers from the Fourth Century to the Fourteenth (Hampshire:
Variorum, 1992).
33. James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography,
Exploration, and Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 82–120.
34. Texts available in A. Giannini, Paradoxographorum Graecorum Reliquiae
(Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1965). For a recent bibliography on para-
doxography, see William Hansen, trans., Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 2–12. See also Alessandro Giannini,
Thule, says it all: Üpista, or “unbelievable things” take place beyond the
edges of existence.35 Even if, as Strabo remarked, “the distant is diffi-
cult to disprove,”36 the description of marvels required little justifica-
tion. In a parody of the genre, A True Story (Verae Historiae), Lucian
linked marvels with remote places when he promised to “tell all kinds
of lies in a plausible and specious way,” as generations of travel writers
had done before him.37 Despite his irony, he is pointing to a common-
place of travel writing: a distant place without marvels is not so distant
after all.38
Some distant lands gained a special reputation for miracles. Egypt, in
particular, was famed for its prodigies.39 In the fifth century B.C.E.
“Studi sulla paradossografia greca,” Rendiconti Istituto Lombardo Accademia di

Scienze e Lettere 97 (1963): 247–66; Roger French, Ancient Natural History: His-
tories of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1994), 299–303. For an anti-paradoxo-
graphical writer, see the fourth-century B.C.E. refutations of mythological mar-
vels in Palaephatus’s perº Öp¥stwn (1902 Teubner text, repr. with trans. by Jacob
Stern; Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1996). Within paradoxography,
there were first-person accounts about traveling to a distant land in search of
saving wisdom, an even closer parallel to the Christian travelogues; see John J.
Winkler, Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s Golden Ass
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 257–73.
35. The Wonders beyond Thule (Sandy, 779). See also James S. Romm, “Nov-
els beyond Thule: Antonius Diogenes, Rabelais, Cervantes,” in The Search for
the Ancient Novel, ed. James Tatum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994), 101–16, esp. 103. Cf. Romm, Edges of the Earth, 202–14.
36. Strabo, Geog. 11.6.4, cited in Romm, Edges of the Earth, 98 and n. 37.
37. Lucian, Ver. Hist. 1.2–3 (LCL 1:249); among his forebears, he mentions
Ctesias, Iambulus, and Homer. On this topos, see Emilio Gabba, “True History
and False History in Classical Antiquity,” JRS 71 (1981): 50–62, esp. 53.
38. François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other
in the Writing of History, trans. Janet Lloyd (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), 231–32.
39. See, for example, the mid-fourth-century C.E. geography Expositio totius
mundi et gentium, 34 (ed. J. Rougé, SC 124 [1966]). For a valuable discussion of
Greco-Roman “Egyptomania,” see David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt:
Herodotus devoted an entire book of the Histories to Egypt for the

sole reason that “nowhere are there so many marvellous things
(qwm_sia).”40 Egypt’s reputation for exotica and healings endured
throughout the imperial period, as young intellectuals from all over the
empire set out in pursuit of secret knowledge. Plutarch describes
Cleombrotus of Sparta, who “made many excursions in Egypt” and was
“a man fond of seeing things and acquiring knowledge.”41 And Greek
novelists such as Achilles Tatius set some of their most fantastic adven-
tures in Egypt.42
Even to Christians who restricted themselves to Christian texts, the
connection between distance and miracle was familiar by the fourth cen-
tury.43 Legends of the apostles edified and entertained ancient audiences
with marvels about distant places. Audiences followed the travels of the
wonder-working apostles Thomas, Philip, and Peter to India, Parthia,
and Rome, respectively. More exotic were the exploits of Andrew, who
rescued Matthias from the eye-gouging, cannibalistic Myrmidonians, or
Philip, who saved his companions from the bloodthirsty Ophians.44
Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998),

217–21. Lucien Regnault points to the fascination with Egypt shaping the lit-
erary developments in the apothegmatic tradition (“Les apophtegmes des pères
en Palestine aux Ve et VIe siècles,” Irénikon 54 [1981]: 320–30, esp. 328–29).
40. Herodotus, Hist. 2.35 (LCL 1:315).
41. Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, 410 a–b: Ön¶r filoqe_mwn ‘n kaº filo-
maq¶v (LCL 5:353). For a historical perspective on this type of inquisitive travel,
see E. D. Hunt, “Travel, Tourism, and Piety in the Roman Empire: A Context
for the Beginnings of Christian Pilgrimage,” Échos du monde classique 28 (1984):
391–417, esp. 403–8.
42. Achilles Tatius, 3.18–19. Only in Egypt do Clitophon’s eyes “meet
[their] match,” (5.1), so amazing are the sights.
43. For instance, Macrina (Gregory of Nyssa, V. Macrinae, 3); Melania
(V. Mel. 23).
44. Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 4–6; Acts of Philip, 3; Richard A. Lipsius and
Maximillian Bonnet, eds., Acta apostolorum apocrypha (1891–1903, repr.
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1959), 1:78–103 (Peter); 2.2:1–98 (Philip); 2.2:99–291
Christian storytellers could also draw more subtle connections

between miracle and distance. In the Acts of Thomas, the apostle’s first
miracle describes how he underwent a stupefying and sudden change in
appearance at a wedding feast: in describing the guests’ confusion, the
narrator includes several reminders that Thomas is a foreigner, speaking
in a foreign tongue.45 Thus miracles were the stuff not only of an amaz-
ing life, but also the stuff of foreign visitors and exotic places.
Even if miracles remain an unlikely feature of travel writing to mod-
ern readers, who regard the genre as somehow closer to “fact,” they were
not so for the ancients. More than mere embellishment, marvels
enhanced the sense of distance inscribed in travelers’ tales. As François
Hartog points out, without miracles Herodotus’s construction of Egypt
would have failed. Marvels convinced readers to believe in the “other-
ness” of a place called Egypt. Thus Herodotus relied on marvels to main-
tain the spatial as well as cultural remoteness of Egypt. As Hartog
explains the literary effect of marvels, “Thoma translates the difference
between there and here and, as such, . . . produces an impression of real-
ity. It declares: I am the reality of otherness.”46 Hartog is making an
important point here: however fantastic they might be, accounts of mir-
acles heighten and solidify the writer’s claims that a wholly other people
(Thomas). Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the
Cannibals, ed. and trans. Dennis Ronald MacDonald (Atlanta: Scholars, 1990).
Here I follow the translations provided in James K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New
Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). On the affinities between travel tales and
Christian apocrypha, see Dennis Ronald MacDonald, Christianizing Homer:
The Odyssey, Plato, and The Acts of Andrew (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 77–84.
45. Acta Thom. 4, 8: “And they all looked at him, as at a stranger and one
come from a foreign land.” The staring continued until Thomas’s appearance
changed, “but they did not understand what he said, since he was Hebrew and
what he said was spoken in the Hebrew tongue.”
46. Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, 237.
lives in a truly distant land. By this logic, miracles are best understood as
tools for constructing reality and not necessarily chinks in truth’s armor.
Given the pervasiveness of marvel writing in historical, geographi-
cal, and novelistic works,47 Christian audiences would find it natural to
encounter miracles (and many of them) in a travel account.48 Thus, the
historiai and travel writing were related precisely because of miracles,
not despite them. Within this hybrid genre, miracles provided com-
mentary on both places and persons. As hagiography within travel writ-
ing, the historia, as a genre, played a key role in shaping the pilgrims’
image of desert asceticism. For if hagiography allows the reader to
imagine an individual holy life, travel writing has the added effect of
connecting that holy existence to a place. In expanding a travel narrative
with biographical digressions (and not the other way around), the histo-
ria allowed ancient audiences to imagine individual ascetics within a
separate world. When the evocation of another world—and not just its
individual inhabitants—captures the reader’s imagination, we are deal-
ing with travel writing. To appreciate the role of travel writing in shap-
ing the Christian religious imagination, I turn to a closer examination
of the pilgrim’s voice, allusions to distances, travel impressions, and des-
tinations first as they are presented in the History of the Monks and then
in the Lausiac History.
DISPLACEMENT IN THE
HISTORIA MONACHORUM
The challenge for any travel writer is to draw the reader into another,
unfamiliar world, one that is distant and self-contained. To convince the
47. See, for example, Jacques LeGoff, “The Medieval West and the Indian
Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon,” in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980),
189–200, esp. 193; Romm, Edges of the Earth, 82–120.
48. Even the title “historia” alerts the reader to a travel genre. In addition to
signifying “investigation,” the term could also mean “visits” in fourth-century
reader of that separation, the writer uses various techniques to differen-

tiate between the reader’s world and the world described in the text.49
As a way to preserve a “clear cultural distance,”50 utopian and exotic
writers invoke boundaries and distances to establish the reader’s status
as stranger to the world in the text. Even if the author draws the readers
closer to the world described in the text, they are never assimilated into
it. Every “there” implies a “here”; every “them” suggests an “us.”51 This
displacement is essential if the writer is to succeed at rendering an exotic
world sufficiently familiar to be understood but without undermining
its “otherness.”
Late antique Christians were reminded of the distance between
themselves and the Egyptian monks whenever the author of the History
of the Monks alluded to his identity as an outsider writing for other out-
siders. Sometimes those cues are subtle, as in this description of John of
Lycopolis’s miracles: “These are the wonders which [John] performed
before strangers who came to see him (toÙv ôcwqen òrxome^nouv). As
regards his own fellow-citizens (pol¥taiv sunex‹v), who frequently came
to him for their needs, he foreknew and revealed things hidden in the
future.”52 Even though both groups benefit from the holy man’s powers,
the distinction between outsiders (ôcwqen) and those nearby (sunex‹v)
remains firm and keeps the reader at a remove from the pilgrim’s desti-
nation, the holy man.
What buttresses that distinction is the continuous rhetorical pres-
ence of the first-person traveler-narrator. Whereas use of the third per-
writings. See Lampe, PGL, 678b, s.v. “∂stor¥a.” Eusebius also uses ∂stor¥a in the
context of (pilgrim) travel, Hist. eccl. 6.11.1 (ed. E. Schwartz, 540.27); I thank
E. Mühlenberg for this reference.
49. Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, 212–59.
50. François Hartog, Mémoire d’Ulysse: Récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne
(Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 60.
51. Cf. Hartog, Mirror of Herodotus, 249.
52. HM 1.11 (Russell, 53).
son might efface the pilgrim, the History of the Monks relies on that
authorial presence, particularly in the opening words of many notices.
One chapter opens, “We also saw another father in the desert not far
from the city, called Theon, a holy man who had lived as an anchorite in
a small cell and had practised silence for thirty years . . . One could see
him with the face of an angel giving joy to his visitors by his gaze and
abounding with much grace.”53 The traveler’s direct, visual experience
of the holy man—his physical appearance, some loose geographical
coordinates, and Theon’s hospitality—anchors the pilgrim’s presence at
the outset of the notice. Such reminders appear throughout the descrip-
tion. The author not only sees for the audience but even controls what
is seen. As he says elsewhere, “But what need is there to speak of any of
the works of this saint other than those which we perceived with our
own eyes?”54 Wedged between the monks and the implied reader, the
traveler’s rhetorical presence holds firm the distance between the
reader’s world and the exotic world that is visited. In this rhetoric of dis-
tancing, the eyewitness lays claim not just to veracity but also to dis-
tance.55 It is not surprising that the author of the History of the Monks
casts himself as an eyewitness, so as to occupy that precarious middle
ground between the world of the monks and the reader’s world.
53. HM 6.1 (Russell, 69).

54. HM 1.13 (Russell, 53); cf. 12.12 and 10.1, in reference to Copres, who
performed some miracles “before our very eyes.” On the significance of eye-
witness accounts in the historiai, see Rapp, “Storytelling,” 431–48, esp. 441; on
this topos in pagan historiography, see John Marincola, Authority and Tradition
in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
63–86.
55. The importance of being an eyewitness—or having consulted with eye-
witnesses—figures into many prologues and resurfaces in subsequent notices, as
in Palladius, HL prol. 2, cf. 35.3; Theodoret, HR prol. 11 (Price, 9), cf. HM
prol. 3, cf. 1.19; 8.50. On the significance of this topos for perceptions of the
hagiographer, see Derek Krueger, “Typological Figuration in Theodoret of
Cyrrhus’s Religious History and the Art of Postbiblical Narrative,” JECS 5 (1997):
393–419, esp. 415–16.
The eyewitness perspective alone, however, cannot sustain this dis-

tance. Geographical details, such as place-names, distances, and bound-
aries, also enhance the “otherness” of Egyptian monasticism. Such
markers are part of a larger strategy to define the remoteness of the
“other,” implying that what cannot be completely understood can at
least be measured.56 Travel writers often marked the limits of human
civilization in order to investigate those who dwelt beyond them.57
Pliny located strange races at the edge of the known world or, as he
called it, “the Earth’s Door Bolt.”58 One function of these markers was
to allow the author to insert a comfortable distance between the audi-
ence and the world described in the text.
Distances serve a similar purpose in the History of the Monks. In sev-
eral notices the author emphasizes the distances and difficulties involved
in reaching holy people, as if to heighten the hardships and rewards that
await the reader. At first, the author hesitates to describe the desert of
Antinoë where Abba Elias lived, insisting that “no description can do
justice to that rugged desert in the mountain.” Despite this compunc-
tion, the author proceeds to describe the arduous path one must follow
to reach that perfect monk.59 Even more perilous is the approach to
Scetis: “This place is a waste land lying at a distance of a day’s and a
night’s journey from Nitria through the desert. It is a very perilous jour-
ney for travelers. For if one makes even a small error, one can get lost in
the desert and find one’s life in danger.”60
56. Cf. Hartog, who refers to these techniques as “operators of intelligibil-

ity” (Mirror of Herodotus, 234–35).
57. Lucian, Ver. Hist. 5 (Reardon, 622).
58. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 7.10 (home to the one-eyed Arimaspi); cf. other exotic
peoples who crowd the edge of Pliny’s map, as in Lixos (5.1.3) and those
beyond Africa (5.8.45–46). On ethnography and the eschatai, see Romm, Edges
of the Earth, 39.
59. HM 7.2 (Russell, 69).
60. HM 23.1 (Russell, 113).
The epilogue is devoted to enumerating the “great dangers”—

starvation, swamps, floods, attacks by humans and beasts, drowning—
from which the travelers were delivered. The author introduces that
catalogue of torments thus: “In fact, it was not without danger or hard-
ship that we visited those fathers whom we have mentioned. Nor was it
without considerable effort that we saw what is reported in this work.
On the contrary, we suffered much on our journey and came very near
to losing our lives before we were counted worthy to see these things.”61
The catalogue of calamities is explicitly patterned on Job’s seven trials,
but it also brings to mind the shipwrecks, monsters, desert islands, and
other perils found in ancient marvel writing. While these hardships may
appear a sobering antidote to the marvels described in previous pages,
the dangers of Scetis and of the epilogue in effect heighten the mar-
velous nature of the destinations. Such dangers are the necessary condi-
tions for being “counted worthy to see these things,” a reward that is
promised in the chapter on Scetis: “All the monks [in Scetis] have
attained perfection.”62
This litany of hardships and great distances has a larger purpose: to
prepare the reader for the marvels interlaced throughout the History of
the Monks. Displacement and miracles are bound even in the opening
lines of the prologue: “For [God] brought us to Egypt and showed us
great and wonderful things (meg_la kaº qaumast_).”63 In this introduc-
tion one hears the opening words of Herodotus, who introduces the
subject of his Histories as meg_la te kaº qaumast_.64 This cue also evokes
61. HM epil. 3 (Russell, 118).

62. HM 23.1 (Russell, 113). A more graphic connection between remoteness
and greatness appears in Philostratus’s V. Apoll. (2.4), which notes that the inhab-
itants become taller as one approaches India: thus, whereas at the Caucasus
Mountain dwellers are said to be eight feet tall, he reports that at the Indus, the
men were two feet taller.
63. HM prol. 1 (Russell, 49).
64. Herodotus, Hist. 1.1 (LCL 1:2).
Egypt’s longstanding reputation as a distant land of abundant natural

beauty, fertility, strange fauna, antiquity, and wisdom.65 The History of
the Monks casts the monks in that exotic glow: “They do not busy them-
selves with any earthly matter or take account of anything that belongs
to this transient world. But while dwelling on earth in this manner, they
live as true citizens of heaven. Some of them do not even know that
another world exists on earth.”66 Here we find a people oblivious to
the audience’s world. The language of two worlds erects a one-way
glass that permits the reader to observe the monks while the monks
remain unaware of the reader’s existence. That separation is critical to
the work’s ability to construct the “otherness” of desert asceticism.
Together geographical distance and inviolable containment anticipate
further displacement in the body of the travelogue.
Displacement also has a temporal dimension.67 In the tradition of
ancient utopian writing, the author of the History of the Monks depicts
the desert as a place where the distant past—in this case, the biblical
past—is restored among the monks. Several markers denote this tem-
poral divide between reader and monks. In one notice, Apelles tells the
story of a monk who is considered to be “a man of another age, who sur-
65. K. A. D. Smelik and E. A. Hemelrijk, “ ‘Who Knows Not What Mon-

sters Demented Egypt Worships?’: Opinions on Egyptian Animal Worship in
Antiquity as Part of the Conception of Egypt,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der
römischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini and W. Haase (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1984),
ser. 2, vol. 17, part 4, 1853–2337, esp. 1873–75, 1897, 1938–55; I thank
Stephanie West for this reference. For Christian examples, see the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas in The Apocryphal New Testament, 68–83. See also Paul J. Achte-
meier, “Jesus and the Disciples as Miracle Workers in the Apocryphal New Tes-
tament,” in Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1976), 149–86, esp. 155–56.
66. HM prol. 5–6 (Russell, 49–50).
67. Elsner detects a similar temporal and mythologizing displacement in
Pausanias’s description of Greece (Art and the Roman Viewer, 140–44).
passes in virtue all the monks of our own time.”68 That sense of
“another age” is established early in the prologue, when the author
marks the narrative’s true beginning with “the coming of our Saviour
Jesus Christ.”69 By turning back the clock in this way, the author can
easily elide the Egyptian ascetics with Christ and the apostles: “They
have performed cures, miracles and acts of power like those which the
holy prophets and apostles worked. The Saviour performs miracles
through them in the same way.”70 The epilogue observes: “To this day,
[the monks] raise the dead and walk on water just like Peter.”71 Both
temporal references bracket the entire narrative within biblical time.
Not just in their deeds but also in their physical appearance, the holy
men are described as resembling biblical figures. Although I develop the
sensory implications of this resemblance in chapter 5, their function as
a travel-writing trope is worth mentioning here. Abba Or, we are told,
“looked just like an angel. He was about ninety years old and had a bril-
liant white beard down to his chest. And his face was so radiant that the
sight of him alone filled one with awe.”72 Another desert father, Theon,
had “the face of an angel giving joy to his visitors by his gaze and
abounding with much grace.”73 As any attentive reader of saints’ lives
might note, moral and even biographical resemblances to specific bibli-
cal figures were a common technique for authenticating the holy per-
son’s sanctity.74 By invoking physical resemblances, these travel writers
68. HM 13.3 (Russell, 93).

71. HM epil. 2 (Russell, 118).
72. HM 2.1 (Russell, 63, modified).
73. HM 6.2 (Russell, 68);. cf. HM 26; 7.1 (Russell, 69): “even the sight of
[Elias] was very impressive.” Although the connection to Elijah is explicit, no
physical description is included.
74. A point underscored by Flusin, Miracle et histoire, 85; cf. HL 12.1–2; HR
6.5; 22.3; Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Cyriac. 2; V. Euthy. 1, 5, 8; Athanasius, V. Ant. 7;
reduce the complexity of a human life to a moment of biblical percep-

tion. When cast in biblical language, these portraits arrest the convul-
sions of ascetic life into a crisp, clear, biblical event. As Mary Campbell
once described this double function of biblical language in pilgrims’
narratives, it “domesticates the places thus ‘described’ and provides the
thrill of strangeness.”75 In the History of the Monks, however, it is per-
sons, not places, that are domesticated and exoticized through a biblical
idiom.
Separated from the rest of human society both temporally and spa-
tially, the distant peoples enjoy a privileged relation to nature. Utopian
descriptions of distant lands often remark on the longevity of the inhab-
itants, as in Pliny’s description of the Hyperboreans, “who live to
extreme old age and are famous for legendary marvels. Here are
believed to be the hinges on which the firmament turns.”76 In this brief
description, Pliny links old age, marvels, and the edges of existence. The
History of the Monks drew similar inferences about distance and
longevity. Apollo was at least eighty years old; both Abba Or and John
of Lycopolis were ninety; Elias was expected to be one hundred.77 Their
advanced ages pale in comparison to the biblical patriarchs who lived
over nine hundred years (cf. Gen 5:3–32); yet such longevity would
surely have earned them a place in the record books of antiquity, such as
Phlegon of Tralles’s Long-Lived Persons, an anecdotal list of people
whose sole claim to fame was their advanced age.78 Although the History
of the Monks bears no direct resemblance to formal treatises on
longevity, the topic constitutes yet another affinity between the Chris-
V. Charitonis 8, 24, 43. On the significance of this compositional mimesis, see

Krueger, “Typological Figuration,” esp. 403–5.
75. Campbell, “The Object of One’s Gaze,” 6 (Campbell’s emphasis).
76. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 4.87; cf. 7.28, 153–55; Expositio totius mundi et gentium, 7.
77. HM 2.1; 1.17; 7.1.
78. Hansen, Phlegon, 50–57; on the background of this genre, see ibid.,
17–20.
tian travelogue and pagan works dealing with utopias and geographical
wonders, including paradoxographies.79
The utopian qualities of the History of the Monks are hard to miss. On
the Island of the Sun, as Iambulus describes it, inhabitants live to the age
of 150 years, when they voluntarily remove themselves from society.80
Likewise, within Isidore’s monastery, the monks lived a self-sufficient
existence. “Within the walls,” as the pilgrims learned from the lone
guest master, “were such saints that all could work miracles and none of
them ever fell ill before he died.”81 That the monastery was enclosed
and “fortified with a high brick wall” is a detail that both isolates and
insulates these monks from the life-threatening forces of the desert,82 as
well as from the mortality-ridden world of the reader.
Both walls and the desert demarcate a space where a charmed exis-
tence and a new relation to nature can unfold. Wild animals are no men-
ace to these wonder-working monks (although they pose a threat to
travelers, as the epilogue reminds us).83 A new relation to nature is
introduced in the prologue, which states that with the monks, “There is
. . . no anxiety for food and clothing.”84 Several stories echo that re-
assurance. When stranded in the desert without food or water, Abba
79. Indeed, later manuscripts often combined Long-Lived Persons with the
Book of Marvels (Hansen, Phlegon, 17; cf. 19).
80. Diodorus Siculus, 2.57 (LCL 2:72); cf. Pliny’s description of the Hyper-
boreans (Nat. Hist. 4.87). For a useful analysis of utopian writings, see David
Winston, “Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun and Hellenistic Literary Utopias,” Science
Fiction Studies 3 (1976): 219–27, esp. 221–23.
81. HM 17. 1–3 (Russell, 101).
82. Antoine Guillaumont, “La conception du désert chez les moines
d’Egypte,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 188 (1975): 3–21; repr. in id., Aux origines
du monachisme chrétien (Spiritualité Orientale, 30; Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye
de Bellefontaine, 1979), 69–87, esp. 77–78.
83. See HM 4.3; 9.9; cf. epil., 11–13. On this topos see Ward, “Introduc-
tion,” in Russell, Lives of the Desert Fathers, 43.
Apollo and his disciples were visited by a “number of men . . . complete

strangers to them, who said that they had traveled a long distance.” The
strangers brought enough food to last for months, including “things
that do not grow in Egypt”: exotic fruit, fresh milk, even bread that was
still hot from the oven—an oven in a distant land!85 In this brief tale,
where a stranger (the author) tells a story about strangers (Apollo and
the monks) who encounter strangers (the gift-bearers), distance and
miracle go hand in hand.
With supplies of food assured, a moderate diet becomes a privilege
conferred by abundance rather than a necessity. Iambulus’s islanders,
for instance, follow a prescribed diet.86 And the Camarines, according
to the fourth-century C.E. Expositio totius mundi et gentium, live off wild
honey and pepper drinks.87 Likewise, the monks practice remarkable
moderation. More than half of a brief notice on Ammon (3.1–2) details,
with ethnographic precision, the spectacle of mealtime at a Pachomian
monastery. The visitor scrutinizes every move: the three spoonfuls of
soup that satisfy one monk; the singular gesture of raising food to
mouth (one or two such moves make up the entire meal), or the monk
who slowly chews on the same piece of bread, for he will eat nothing
else that day.88 Although this restraint may seem less sensational than
angels who deliver hot bread,89 the writer is nevertheless astonished by
it: “I marvelled at these things, as was fitting.”90
Often, however, the excess of marvel was too much to bear, or
describe. Perhaps the most striking resemblance between the History of
85. HM 8.40 (Russell, 76); cf. HM 12.15 and Ps 78.19.

86. Diodorus Siculus 2.57.4; 2.59.1–5. Cf. Pliny’s description of the Astomi
(Nat. Hist. 7.25), who, as their name suggests, have no mouths and must live on
odors alone.
87. Expositio totius mundi et gentium, 4 (SC 124).
88. HM 3.1–2 (Russell, 65).
89. HM 8.40.
90. HM 3.2 (Russell, 65). Several notices (usually brief ones) close with
details about dietary habits, such as 6.4; 7.3; 15.4; 20.
the Monks and exotic travel writing is the way in which the author con-
fronts the inexplicable. Often paradoxographers as well as geographers
resorted to rapid-fire lists whenever distant wonders defied explana-
tion.91 The History of the Monks also relies on lists. Each notice presents
a collage of personal traits and concrete details about the individual
ascetic or community. Typically the following details find their way into
even the briefest notice: the ascetic’s name, some information about his
followers, characteristic physical features (eikonismos), noteworthy asce-
tic practices, and special supernatural powers.92 Even the longer chap-
ters appear as a list of separate anecdotes and sayings.93
The meaning of these lists depends on the literary context. As Patri-
cia Cox Miller suggests, the repetitive language of ascetic discourse
mimics the repeated movements and utterances typical of monastic
practice.94 In travel discourse, however, lists are part of a larger strat-
egy to exoticize the other rather than to imitate it. The final notice,
which appears as a straightforward list, can illustrate the difference:
“We also visited another John in Diolcos, who was the father of her-
mitages. He too was endowed with much grace. He looked like Abra-
ham and had a beard like Aaron’s. He had performed many miracles
and cures, and was especially successful at healing people afflicted with
paralysis and gout.”95 The biblical content of these characterizations is
far less exotic than Herodotean descriptions of “dogheaded men and
91. Romm, Edges of the Earth, 102–6. Cf. Michael Roberts’s observation that
detailed lists had the effect of “creat[ing] the impression of exhaustivity” (The
Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity [Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1989], 41).
92. For example, HM 2.1; 6.1; 26. See Eva Schulz-Flügel, ed., Tyrannius
Rufinus, Historia monachorum sive De Vita Sanctorum Patrum (PTS 34; Berlin:
DeGruyter, 1990), 8.
93. For example, HM 12 (Helle).
94. Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism and the ‘Body from Nowhere,’ ”
JECS 2 (1994): 137–54, esp. 144.
95. HM 26 (Russell, 117).
headless that have their eyes in their breasts.”96 The effect on the
reader, however, is the same: lists consolidate disparate facts, leaving no
room for explanation or connection. As James Romm observes in his
survey of ancient geographical writing, “Lists present the wonders of
the East as an aggregation of facts; they demand that the multiplicity
of eastern nature be accepted on its own terms.”97 Likewise, the author
of the History of the Monks used list-making to fragment the wonders of
desert asceticism and then rearrange the pieces into an intelligible pic-
ture for the reader.
The short notices that comprise the History of the Monks also serve to
fragment the author’s picture of desert asceticism. The brevity of the
notice allows the travel writer to control what the reader “sees” and
knows. In as little as two or three sentences this author puts the stilted
and stunted notice to effective use as a focusing device. As soon as read-
ers peer over high walls, through small openings, or across expansive
deserts to catch a glimpse of Egyptian asceticism, the author cuts the
gaze short to preserve that distance and fascination between the audi-
ence and those living saints.
Often, however, the author himself senses when those controlling
techniques buckle and collapse. One hears the breathless exhaustion in
remarks that admit to the inadequacy of language: “They saw and heard
a host of other wonders, such as the tongue does not dare to utter or the
ears to hear.” Or, as he says of Abba Apollo’s signs and wonders, “They
defy description.” Hyperbole also breeds silence, as when the narrator
warns, “If anyone should wish to see . . . all [the fathers], the whole of
his life would not be long enough to make a complete tour.”98 Such
remarks are frail placeholders for the complex experience of encounter-
ing a living saint. In his efforts to show the excessiveness of monastic
96. Hist. 4.191 (LCL 2:395), cited in Romm, Edges of the Earth, 91.
97. Romm, Edges of the Earth, 91.
98. HM 8.7, 34, 62 (Russell, 71, 75, 79).
marvels, this author at times can only stumble into silence, less out of a
sense of taboo or secrecy99 than out of amazement.
Distance, nature, miracle, and sacred time, then, are integral to the
construction of the world portrayed in the History of the Monks. With
them, the writer strings together moments of biblical perception. These
moments, viewed as a whole, say more about the region than about any
single inhabitant. By demarcating the desert through distances and
walled structures, then populating it with so many patriarchs, prophets,
and angels, the author of the History of the Monks wraps Egyptian
monastic culture in a biblical haze. Anything and anyone resonate with
biblical significance. Seeking biblical reminders in every rock, tree, and
plain was a common pursuit among Holy Land pilgrims, who relied on
monks to help them identify those resonances.100 What the History of
the Monks achieved—in a way that pilgrims’ writings did not—was to
cast every monastic as a biblical figure in that tableau vivant. By examin-
ing this work through the lens of travel writing, one can appreciate the
collective effect of these tropes.
DISPLACEMENT IN THE LAUSIAC HISTORY
In the Lausiac History, the trio of miracle, distance, and Bible are put to
a different use. Like the author of the History of the Monks, Palladius
writes from an outsider’s perspective, using the itinerary as a framework
for brief hagiographic notices, all contained between a prologue and
epilogue.101 And yet Palladius’s collection of travel memories has a dif-
99. Cf. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.38.7; cf. Elsner, Art and the Roman
Viewer, 145–49.
100. Leyerle, “Landscape as Cartography,” 126–32; see also Campbell, Wit-
ness, 17–20.
101. The similar organization and subject matter facilitated the later confla-
tion of these two works. For a concise overview of the textual history, see Young,
From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 38–39. One important difference is the fact that Pal-
ferent tone. Recounting fewer miracles, this work provides some of the
most poignant portraits found in monastic literature. In his efforts to
present the varieties of monasticism, Palladius also shows the human
price for such pursuits. His condemnation of ascetic zeal reveals psy-
chological wounds, fallen heroes, and a simple recognition that the
demands of an elusive perfection can be too much to bear for a fragile
and brittle ascetic will.102
Leaving others to judge the veracity of Palladius’s travelogue,103 I
instead consider its function. Palladius was faced with the problem of
how to recount his voyage to an audience primarily concerned with
advancing their own spiritual progress. He solved it by appealing to one
biblical exemplar in particular: the Apostle Paul. In the prologue the
reader learns that Palladius travels and writes for the same reasons Paul
did. Just as Paul “was not satisfied merely to hear of Peter’s virtue, but
he longed for a meeting with him,”104 so does Palladius accept “the
hardship of travel gladly in order to meet a man full of the love of
God.”105 And just as Paul felt compelled to record (or “boast”) of his
experiences “as an incentive to those who lived in self-satisfaction and
idleness,”106 so does Palladius determine the need to write down his
ladius devotes several notices to female ascetics and benefactors (HL 5, 6, 28, 33,
34, 37, 41, 46, 54–57, 59–61, 63, 64, 67, 69)—a high percentage compared to
other anthologies (cf. Elizabeth A. Clark, “Holy Women, Holy Words: Early
Christian Women, Social History, and the ‘Linguistic Turn,’ ” JECS 6 (1998):
413–30, esp. 414 nn. 3–6).
102. For example, HL 2.1 (the ailing Palladius abandons a life he finds
“squalid and harsh”); 12.3 (on the importance of mentioning sickness of “just
men”); and 25–28 (tales about proud hermits), the list being echoed and
expanded in 47 (Paphnutius and Chronius on the moral failings of monks).
103. Rousseau (Ascetics, 17) deems the Lausiac History to be “more balanced
and more credible than the Historia Monachorum,” qualifying Chitty (Desert a
City, 52).
104. HL prol. 6 (Meyer, 25).
105. HL prol. 5 (Meyer, 24–25).
106. HL prol. 5 (Meyer, 24–25).
memories, even twenty years after the fact. Moreover, Palladius points
out, Paul himself was following the example of other pilgrims turned
writers. Palladius remarks, “For even those who wrote down the lives of
the Fathers, Abraham, . . . Moses, Elias, and John, wrote not to glorify
them, but to help their readers.”107 Thus Palladius bathes his travelogue
in the glow of a grander biblical lineage. Whereas the History of the
Monks biblicized the desert, Palladius biblicizes himself as a new Paul,
who narrates his physical travels to promote spiritual progress.108
As an imitator of Paul, Palladius devotes considerable attention in
the prologue to his own “trials” and perseverance: “I would make a jour-
ney of thirty days, or twice that, and covered on foot, God help me, the
whole land of the Romans.”109 In specifying the extent of his travel in
both time and space, as well as the fact that he covered those distances
on foot, Palladius lends spiritual significance to his physical experience.
His willingness to accept hardship permits Palladius to identify with the
physical austerities of his subjects: an askesis of travel qualifies him to
explore the askesis of the desert.
Given that Palladius’s audience is unlikely to repeat the journey, it is
ironic that he alludes often to the physicality of his own travels.110 Palla-
dius later includes many details of the physical journeys that brought him
to these remote places. To reach Mount Nitria, Palladius tells his readers,
one must spend a day and a half crossing the seventy-mile span of Lake
Marea.111 Geographical coordinates also appear: “Beyond the mountain
(of Nitria) stretches the Great Desert reaching as far as Ethiopia, Mazi-
107. HL prol. 7 (Meyer, 25).

108. It is fitting that Palladius returns to imitatio Pauli in the epilogue (HL
71.1–2). Here, however, the allusion is to Paul’s mystical ascent (2 Cor 12), sig-
naled by the reference to a nameless “brother who has been with me from youth
until this very day.” The oblique third person was also used by Paul to refer to
his strange but wonderful journey to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2–5).
109. HL prol. 5 (Meyer, 24–25).
110. HL prol. 15–16 (Meyer, 28–29).
111. HL 7.1 (Meyer, 40).
cae, and Mauretania.”112 He maps out much of his physical experience,

noting the arrangement of monastic complexes,113 the accommodations,
and detailed descriptions of ascetics’ physical appearance.114 Macarius, he
tells us, “was slight and without a beard, having hair only about the lips
and at the end of the chin, for the asceticism he practiced did not allow
hair to sprout on him.”115 And Chronius “measured 15,000 steps from his
village” before choosing his desert settlement.116 Whether these details
are accurate is beside the point. Their collective effect is what matters: to
convey the palpable sense of bodies in a landscape. Like the exotic travel
writers of his day, Palladius invokes the experience of physical space, from
the ascetic body to the desert vistas, as a way to draw his readers to a place
much closer to the edges of the world.117
Toward the middle of the collection, the emphasis on Palladius’s own
physical experiences becomes even more pronounced. He remarks that
he had had the option to remain home and hear stories about John of
Lycopolis. His venerable teacher, Evagrius, chose that course when he
resigned himself with these words: “Gladly would I learn what kind of
man he is from the testimony of one who knows how to interpret mind
and speech. Since I myself cannot see him, I could hear exactly from
another man of his way of life, but I shall not go so far as the moun-
tain.”118 Evagrius’s remark launches Palladius on yet another journey
through the Thebaid to act as Evagrius’s eyes and ears. The contrast
112. HL 7.2 (Meyer, 40).

113. HL 4.
114. See the descriptions of Palladius’s extended stay in the Kellia with
Macarius of Alexandria (HL 18.22, 26)
115. HL 18.29 (Meyer, 67).
116. HL 47.1 (Meyer, 125).
117. On this topos see Romm, Edges of the Earth, 11–20. On the role of the
desert in the ascetic construction of space, see James Goehring, “The
Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Christian
Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–96.
118. HL 35.3 (Meyer, 99). The remark foreshadows Palladius’s own actions:
as the notice draws to a close, Palladius mentions the report he delivered “to the
between the sedentary teacher and his galloping disciple is even more
pronounced in Palladius’s subsequent description of hardships he
endured. Much of the journey is depicted as an endurance test: it took
“eighteen days, partly on foot, partly by sailing along the river.”119 He
also mentions that he was slowed by disease.120 All this detail allows the
reader to empathize with Palladius’s physical exhaustion and disap-
pointment on discovering John’s cell locked and having to wait several
days for an audience with him.
The physical act of travel, along with its the rewards and hardships,
is also described in other chapters. The previous chapter (34), about a
nun who appeared insane, tells how a traveler named Piteroum set out
to find a holy woman more pious than himself at Tabbenisi. There he
discovered this hidden saint and shamed the sisters who abused her.
Most striking in this tale is the way the two central characters, Piteroum
and the holy nun, struggle between stability and movement. An angel
instructs Piteroum, a monk who “had never gone away [from] the
monastery,” to abandon his solitude and “cease wander[ing] about cities
in your mind.”121 As the story draws to a close, both characters are on
the road: Piteroum has left the convent, and the holy nun takes flight,
unable to bear the sisters’ remorse. Fittingly, Palladius keeps silent
about their ultimate destinations. By pairing these two wandering
monks, Palladius valorizes physical travel over the sedentary life.
blessed fathers.” The fact that he appends further discussion of his own physical
ailments (HL 35.11–13) draws attention to the messenger’s weary body. No
doubt this rhetorical move establishes Palladius’s reliability as a desert reporter
not just to the fathers in Egypt but also, by extension, to his readers in Constan-
tinople. As Claudia Rapp remarks (“Storytelling,” 440), this story establishes “an
intrinsic connection between hearing a diegesis, seeing a holy person, and actively
sharing his life.”
119. HL 35.4 (Meyer, 99).
120. HL 35.4; cf. 35.12.
121. HL 34.3 (Meyer, 97).
The importance of displacement also appears in Posidonius’s tale (36),

which immediately follows the John of Lycopolis notice. Like Piteroum,
Posidonius led a solitary existence until he found himself on the point of
starvation, with no choice but to return to “civilization.” Weak from
hunger, he managed to crawl only two miles the first day, when he had a
vision. He immediately returned to his cave and discovered there abun-
dant supplies of food. Beyond the allusions to manna in the wilderness,
the story also contains a comment on travel. The fact that Palladius spec-
ifies the exact, if meager, distance Posidonius traveled allows us to ponder
the spiritual rewards of travel.122 When read together, the stories about
Piteroum, the nun who feigned madness, John of Lycopolis, and Posido-
nius highlight the spiritual progress that comes from physical movement.
These rewards are most pronounced, however, in the tale of an
Egyptian named Sarapion (HL 37), a traveler par excellence. Palladius
describes this monk’s adventures in Greece and aboard a ship bound for
Rome. In Rome he went in search of the great ascetics, including a
famous holy woman. Mirroring Palladius in his excruciating wait for an
audience with John of Lycopolis, Sarapion also endures several delays.
When Sarapion finally meets the holy woman, the question of who is
the true traveler comes to the fore:
he met her and asked her: “Why do you keep sitting?”

she said: “I do not sit, but I travel.”
he said: “Where do you travel?”
and she: “To God.”
he asked her: “Are you living or dead?”
she answered: “I believe in God that I am dead, for
no one in the flesh makes that jour-
ney.”123
122. HL 36.3 (Meyer, 104).

123. HL 37.13.
Significant here is the fact that Palladius never mocks Sarapion’s

intensely physical journey. Rather than add Sarapion to his catalogue of
fallen heroes,124 Palladius leaves ambiguous the question of who is the
true pilgrim.
By bringing together an ascetic who has endured an intense physical
journey with one who is engaged on a spiritual journey, Palladius signals
the crucial intersection of physical and spiritual displacement that he
anticipates in the prologue. In the remainder of the story, Sarapion chal-
lenges the woman to prove that she is dead to the world: she must
undress and parade nude in the middle of Rome. He is prepared to do
the same. She balks at the prospect, proving to Sarapion (and the reader)
that no one is entirely dead to the world. And, as Palladius draws the
story to a close, the woman is left “humbled,” her pride “shattered.”125
Sarapion’s dare makes clear to the reader that the woman, if she has
truly reached her goal, must undergo one more physical journey: into
the heart of the city. The interdependence of both types of travel is
noteworthy.
This complex tale about wandering, desired centers, and elusive
goals marks a new direction in Palladius’s larger narrative, which pro-
gresses from physical journeys (described through chapter 37) to spiri-
tual journeys. The effects of this transition, which takes place in Sara-
pion’s simple conversation about travel to God, are found in subsequent
notices. Ephraem of Edessa, we are told, “had accomplished the journey
of the spirit in a right and worthy manner, never deviating from the
straight path.”126 Whereas in earlier notices spiritual and literary jour-
neys compete, by the time of the Philoromus story they converge. In
this tale, Palladius describes how Philoromus wandered on foot to
Rome, then to Alexandria to pray at Saint Mark’s shrine, and finally to
124. For example, HL 25–27, 47.

125. HL 37.16 (Meyer, 110).
126. HL 40.1 (Meyer, 116).
Jerusalem. For one who logged so many miles, his final remark, “Never
do I remember being absent from God in thought,”127 highlights the
complex interaction of distance, movement, and spirituality. All these
encounters between physical and spiritual travelers set the stage for the
brief story of a virgin who leaves her cell only after sixty years of seclu-
sion in order to “make the journey to the Master and see all the
saints.”128 The reader follows her to her mother’s home and to a church
as she makes preparations for her own death. Among its other messages,
the tale reminds us that even on the cusp of death, physical movement
and spiritual progress are intertwined.
For Palladius, the journey remains an enduring metaphor for the
spiritual life.129 Yet, unlike critics of pilgrimage who advocated interior-
izing all journeys,130 Palladius viewed the physical journey positively.
These episodes attest that any spiritual advancement must stem from
the physical journey. Physical distance and movement are indispensable
to the efforts to gauge one’s distance from and movement toward God.
At the center of his collection, he included a cluster of notices (34–37)
that accentuated physical journeys, including his own, as a way to bring
the reader gradually to deeper reflection on spiritual journeys. By this
arrangement, the physical journey may invite allegory, but it never dis-
solves in it. Even when physical and spiritual journeys appear at odds,
any attempts to separate the two prove disastrous for protagonists. That
message is borne out by the overall structure of the work.
In the Lausiac History, displacement creates the effect of a real jour-
ney so as to provide a template for the reader’s own spiritual displace-
ment. To measure one’s journey toward a holy man or woman provides
127. HL 45.4 (Meyer, 123).

128. HL 60.1 (Meyer, 141).
129. On this metaphor, see Margaret Miles, Practicing Christianity: Critical
Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 43–62.
130. For instance, Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.16 (SC 363:120).
a scale for measuring one’s journey toward God. Already in the pro-
logue, Palladius sets his audience in motion: “Go to a clear window and
seek for meetings with holy men and women so that you may see clearly
your own heart as in the case with a book of small writing.”131 Not only
does the metaphor elide a better reading of the written page with a
closer reading of the heart, but it also makes all benefits at the “window”
involve some physical displacement. On this spiritual journey, even
armchair travelers have their marching orders. Palladius also offers
himself as a model for how a physical journey gradually leads to a spiri-
tual journey. Displacement also has an additional function in this work.
By including so many travelers’ tales, the travelogue recreates the effect
of moving and pausing to look, and it thereby casts the reader as a
passerby who stops long enough to gaze on the monastic but never fully
enters the monastic space. Through this literary effect of moving and
watching, the historiai had a profound influence on the image of the
monastic, the object of the pilgrim’s gaze, ultimately endowing him with
the qualities of a monument.
THE MONASTIC AS MONUMENT
Narrowly defined, the word monumentum stood for anything “written

or produced for the sake of memory.”132 To Romans any tangible
reminders like a tomb inscription, statue, building, or temple could be
regarded as a monumentum. Yet, poets, orators, and historians also
applied the term to their works. Livy, for example, referred to his his-
tory of Rome as an inlustris monumentum, on which the reader “beholds
131. HL prol. 15–16 (Meyer, 28–29).

132. Varro, De lingua latina 6.49 (Spengel and Spengel [1885; repr. 1979]),
quoted and translated in Mary Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1997), 15–26, esp. 15–16; cf. Andrew Feldherr, Spectacle
and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998),
1–7.
the lessons of every kind of experience.”133 Underlying this broad use of

the term was the assumption that monumenta were visible remnants
from the past.134
The metaphor is particularly fitting for pilgrims’ depictions of Chris-
tian monastics. As Livy’s comments suggest, the monument required
the sustained gaze of an audience. Or, as with the epitaphs that lined the
road, the passerby was expected to pause, reflect, and enter another time
while remaining in the same place. Some Roman epitaphs “addressed”
the passerby directly, assuming the voice of a speaker from the grave
that invited the reader to gaze. “Stop for a little, stranger,” one epitaph
begged, “and then go on your way; do not leave the stele at once, but
first see what it says.”135 The still monument was rife with contradic-
tions, a voice from the past beckoning to those in the present, detaining
passersby long enough to make them beholders, and demanding that a
fleeting glance turn into a stationary gaze. Such were the connotations
of these “hybrid places,” to borrow Mary Jaeger’s words.136
133. Livy, Ab urbe condita, praef. 10 (trans. B. O. Foster; LCL 1:7). Cf. Livy,
Ab urbe condita, praef. 6; Cicero, De off. 3.4.3; Cat. 95; Horace, Carm. 3.30.1
(cited along with other examples in Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome, 17 n. 9); cf.
Cicero, II Verr. 4.69. It is worth wondering if the inclusion of speech acts as
monumenta was facilitated by the emphasis on enargeia in historical writing (e.g.,
Plutarch, De glor. Ath. 347a). On Livy’s contribution to the notion that the
historian renders the past visible, see Feldherr, Spectacle and Society, 32; cf.
Miles (Livy, 10) for the etymological gloss on historia as derived from the Indo-
European root *weid, “to see.”
134. As Gary Miles (Livy, 17) defines the term, monumenta “represent an
unbroken link with the past, a part of the past still available for direct personal
inspection.”
135. EG 388, 1–2 (Apamea) quoted by Richmond Lattimore, Themes in
Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), 230–37,
esp. 232.
136. Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome, 17. On the political function of monu-
ments, see Feldherr, Spectacle and Society, 12–37. On ergon in Greek historiogra-
phy, see Henry R. Immerwahr, “Ergon: History as a Monument in Herodotus
and Thucydides,” American Journal of Philology 81 (1960): 261–90.
Christians were also attracted to the visualizing and nostalgic possi-

bilities of monuments.137 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, like many other
hagiographers, described the saint’s life as an “aid to memory,” a verbal
equivalent of the types of pagan memorials erected for athletes so as to
“extend their memory as long as possible.”138 More explicit in its use of
the metaphor is an anonymous work from the fifth or sixth century, the
Poem on the Passion of the Lord.139 This work assumes the voice of a mon-
ument to Christ: “Whoever you are who approach . . . stop a little and
look upon me, who, though innocent, suffered for your crime.”140 Like
a monument, the poem draws the reader into the past. In just over
twenty verses of this eighty-line poem, a condensed gospel told in the
first person, Christ recounts his birth, ministry, and trial. Only at the
point of recalling the trial is the reader-viewer invited at last to enter
the drama. The tense switches from the past to the present: “Fasten in
your mind ( fige animo)” the witnesses, Pilate, “and the immense cross
pressing on my shoulders and wearied back.”141 With increasing physi-
cality, the poem moves from past to present, from remembrance to
visualization: “Now survey me from head to foot. . . . Behold and see my
locks clotted with blood, and my blood-stained neck under my very hair
. . . survey my compressed and sightless eyes . . . see the blood streaming
from [my wound], and my perforated feet, and blood-stained limbs.”142
137. Cf. HM 8.8 (ergon used for exemplary deeds); closer to our more archi-
tectural monuments are the pyramids, or, “Joseph’s granaries,” as they are called
(HM 18.3; Russell, 102); cf. the Piacenza pilgrim (ca. 570), who also refers to the
“twelve granaries of Joseph,” noting their miraculous replenishment (“and they
are still full”), Pseudo-Antonini placentini itinerarium, 43 (Wilkinson, 88).
138. HR prol. 3 (Price, 4). Cf. Athanasius, V. Ant. prol.; Cyril of Scythopolis,
V. Euthy., 1.
139. Pseudo-Lactantius, De passione Domini (ed. Samuel Brandt, CSEL 27,
148–51; trans. ANF 7:327–28). On this text, see Angelo Roncoroni, “Sul De
passione Domini Pseudolattanziano,” VC 29 (1975): 208–21.
140. De passione Domini, 1–3.
141. De passione Domini, 37.
142. De passione Domini, 38–45.
The audience is bidden to inspect every inch of the dying body. As the
voice explains, “These monumenta, if at any time you find pleasure in
thinking over them . . . will be incitement to virtue.”143 In this poem
about a talking monument, Christ extends a personal invitation to the
audience to enter his story and relive it.
Like the poem, pilgrims’ narratives generated the circumstances for
perceiving the living saint as a monument. The first-person voice, how-
ever, is that of the passerby and not the monument. By adopting various
travel-writing tropes such as measurements, topographical details, and
boundaries, the authors of the historiai distanced readers from their own
world and the world visited in order to control the diversity of Egyptian
asceticism.144
To a great extent, that control was achieved through tropes that both
domesticated and exoticized the desert. Thus, Palladius’s portraits of
vulnerable ascetics make them painfully familiar to the audience,
whereas the History of the Monks delights in making monks strangers to
the audience. Like an impression on putty stretched and pinched, the
image of desert asceticism shifts before the audience, which learns to
recognize how the same image can contain both the alien and the famil-
iar. The shape of the narrative also sustains that paradox.
Instrumental to this shift in perception is the narrator’s ability to
reposition the reader within the world of the text. Readers are first
directed to positions that allow them to view the ascetics from afar, then
immediately brought up close for a face-to-face encounter. In the His-
tory of the Monks this kind of sweep is best captured in the transition
from the Oxyrhynchus chapter to the notice on Abba Theon (5–6). At
143. De passione Domini, 58, a term also used at 64: “If these monumenta shall
turn away your senses, which are devoted to a perishable world . . .”
144. Campbell (Witness, 3) understands this predicament: “The traveler in
foreign parts is faced with a world for which his language is not prepared: no
matter how naïve the writer’s understanding of language, the option of simple
transparence, of verbal equivalences, is not open.”
Oxyrhynchus, a city recalled for the “marvels we saw there,” the narra-
tor mentions “temples and capitols of the city.” But their identity as
monumenta is constituted strictly by the fact that they were “bursting
with monks.”145 Moreover, the reader remains positioned outside the
town’s walls, reported to contain five thousand Christians, in company
with the “watchmen posted at the gates and entrances” to care for the
needs of “strangers.” From outside the walls, the reader can observe
those within, but the vantage point is panoramic, as the rather round
numbers suggest: churches come in tidy packages of a dozen, and monks
and nuns are bundled by the tens of thousands.146 That emphasis on
exteriority is especially noticeable once the reader is brought into the
city. At this point, the notice rushes to an ending, with a perfunctory
description of profligate hospitality and of the “many great fathers who
possessed various charisms.”147 The shift from big picture to minute
observation does not take place until the following notice, which
describes how Theon had the “face of an angel,” read “Greek, Latin,
and Coptic,” and preferred raw vegetables.148 The closeup is complete
when the notice specifies the animals whose tracks are discerned outside
the hermitage: “antelope and wild asses and gazelle.”149 Thus, in the
course of two brief notices, totaling just over sixty lines in the critical
edition, the narrator has moved the reader from a distant view to a close
inspection.
This repositioning and movement through space shapes the meaning
of the monumentum, which, as Mary Jaeger observes, is “determined
jointly by the reminder, its physical context, and the circumstances of
145. HM 5.2 (Russell, 67).

146. HM 5.5–6 (Russell, 67): In response to his question, “How can one
convey an adequate idea of the throngs of monks and nuns past counting?” the
narrator ventures a guess of “ten thousand monks and twenty thousand nuns.”
147. HM 5.6–7 (Russell, 67).
148. HM 6.2–4 (Russell, 68).
149. HM 6.4 (Russell, 68).
each viewer.”150 No single position can prove satisfactory; the reader is

brought nearer and farther but never stands still. As Jaeger explains this
continuous repositioning, “The closer one is to the monumentum, the
clearer one sees it. However, the viewer who stands too close cannot
take in the monumentum in its entirety.”151 Although Jaeger is com-
menting on Livy, her words could just as well apply to the Christian
travelogues, which also prevent the reader from taking the desert “in its
entirety.” The oscillation between distance and proximity assures that
the reader will never have to contend with all the complexities of Egyp-
tian monasticism. There is sufficient distance to allow readers to recog-
nize the familiar world of the biblical past, but there is only enough
proximity to remind them of the strangeness of desert existence. Against
such a panoramic literary landscape, the holy person was rendered a
monument, a visible proof. From the reader’s various positions the
monks appear as visible traces of past greatness, individual entities that
can be displayed and examined apart from their historical, religious, or
cultural contexts.152
The appeal of the monument for travelers and their audiences is not
hard to understand. For those who “love France but hate the French,”
as the old joke goes, a postcard, painting, or château provides a device
with which to encounter (or, as the case may be, avoid) the otherness of
French culture. Likewise, the literary image of monks provided a device
by which to avoid the complexities of desert existence yet enter the bib-
lical past.
150. Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome, 18. For an insightful discussion of how
viewers interact with public monuments, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of
Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 35–44.
151. Jaeger, Livy’s Written Rome, 24; cf. Livy, Ab urbe condita 6.1.2, on history
as long-distance vision.
152. Immerwahr, “Ergon,” 271; John Elsner, “From the Pyramids to Pausa-
nias and Piglet: Monuments, Travel, and Writing,” in Art and Text in Ancient
The monument’s paradoxical status as an object that simultaneously

belongs to the present and the past affords rich insights into pilgrims’
perceptions of monks. Like monuments, these ascetics bear the legacy
of the biblical past while living in the present. What bridges past and
present in the historiai is the Bible itself. Together, distance and marvel
move the readers to the edges of existence and to a biblical time, per-
mitting them to imagine a place where figures from the sacred past
spring to life against a tidy desert backdrop. The brief, formulaic notices
also play a decisive role in reducing the complexity of ascetic culture to
a “convenient and accessible miniature,” as John Elsner describes the
perceptual shrinkage that monuments invite.153 Every ascetic life was
reduced through the fragmentation and recombination of details. The
brief notice “froze,” as it were, these living artifacts of a distant culture.
Marvels further crystallized the ascetics’ identity as biblical monuments
by merging the wonders of distant places with the miracles of a biblical
past.
The stilted style of pilgrims’ reports, then, served a significant pur-
pose: it acted to stabilize and consolidate the sheer variety of monasti-
cism in Egypt at the end of the fourth century.154 As James Goehring and
others have noticed, the History of the Monks skewed its picture of monas-
ticism toward male ascetics, and particularly those in the desert.155
Whatever the motives behind such choices, it is clear that these pilgrim-
authors needed a way to control, manage, and even reduce the diversity
of the pilgrim’s destinations. Using the form of the brief notice and var-
Greek Culture, ed. Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 224–54, esp. 224, 228–29.
153. Elsner, “From the Pyramids,”, 228.
154. HM prol. 10; 1.32, 45, 46.
155. Cf. Goehring, “Encroaching Desert,” 288–96, esp. 288 and n. 28. On
women in Egyptian monasticism, see Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Mak-
ing of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 227–372,
esp. 311–30.
ious techniques of displacement, these travel writers demarcated and

recast the desert as a biblical land where Paradise was restored and gospel
miracles could find their full realization. And, judging by the popularity
of pilgrimage to living ascetics at this time, the strategy worked.
If travel writing was the solution, what was the problem? Clearly, the
need for an “accurate” account of monasticism was not foremost in these
writers’ minds. The challenge was that of the audience. John Chrysos-
tom’s homilies to the newly baptized offer a rich insight into the audience
for the historiai. While still in Antioch, Chrysostom welcomed a group of
monks who had come from the countryside to join the catechumens. In
John’s greetings one detects how unsettling the visitors’ presence would
have appeared to the new converts: “Let us learn . . . that [the monks]
prove in deeds the things we, in our love of true doctrine strive to teach
by words. . . . Let us not look simply at their appearance and the lan-
guage they speak, while we overlook the virtue of their lives. Let us
observe carefully the angelic life they lead.”156 Apparently the new con-
verts were having a difficult time reconciling the scriptures with the
appearance of the monks before them. “Are such men the fullest expres-
sion of these scriptures’ ideals?” they must have asked. Ever the pastor,
Chrysostom hastened to concede that the monks’ appearance might
indeed appear at odds with the converts’ biblical ideals and to find ways
to reconcile the disparity. Dealing with “cognitive dissonance,” as theo-
rists of conversion remind us, is no light matter. Chrysostom insisted
that the problem was not the monks’ appearance but rather the converts’
misperception. Only proper perception would allow the true believer to
see how the monks embodied the highest truths of scripture. By
acknowledging the initial contradiction, he could help these new Chris-
tians see how vision, rightly used, would achieve the necessary synthesis.
Central to this rhetoric of reconciliation was the careful control of
the converts’ gaze. Chrysostom provided detailed instructions about
what to notice and what to overlook. As the monks stood before these
156. Catech. 8.4 (Harkins, 120).

gawking converts, he carefully directed their gaze: the congregants were

instructed to overlook any rusticity of dress or speech and instead to
gaze intently at the virtue of the monks’ deeds. Only then, he promised
his flock, would the “true doctrine” be made visible.
The preacher’s reasons for reshaping the converts’ perceptions are
difficult to understand at first. With his insistence that things are not as
they seem, he may appear a mere spin doctor. By that interpretation,
however, we risk misreading Chrysostom, who implored his audience to
recognize how the world of the Bible and the world of monks are one
and the same. To elide those two worlds, he assumed a two-pronged
approach: he pointed out how the monks embody the Bible and simul-
taneously erased any perceptions that could undermine this biblical
image. Thus he demanded that details of appearance, speech, and phys-
ical context be ignored to allow what is “angelic” to shine through. By
this strategy of directing and erasing, John was in effect fragmenting his
audiences’ perceptions, then reassembling only those parts that would
constitute his desired biblical image.
This baptismal homily offers an inverted image of the challenges
faced by travel writers such as Palladius and the author of the History of
the Monks. Like Chrysostom, these pilgrim-authors strove to show how
the world of the monks and the world of the Bible were one and the
same. And they had to help their audience to experience the Bible where
they did not expect to find it.
Whereas John Chrysostom had to deal with the fallout from a colli-
sion between expectation and reality, the authors of the historiai dealt
only with their own experiences and the audience’s expectations. They
could omit and supply details as they saw fit, an option Chrysostom
clearly did not have with the “rustic” monks standing in plain view of his
audience. Circumstances notwithstanding, it is tempting to ask if the
authors of the travelogues were in some indirect way responsible for
Chrysostom’s predicament. Might travelers like Palladius or the author
of the History of the Monks have given rise to the inflated expectations
and idealizations that Chrysostom addressed? Whether or not there
exists a historical connection between those who generated idealized

images of monasticism and those who dealt with the consequences of
that image, one thing is clear: the power of travel writing is more com-
plex than many are willing to admit. By definition, travel writing is a ret-
rospective genre, one that reports on past experiences. Yet it could also
shape how pilgrims might construct and anticipate their own experi-
ences. To ancient audiences, at least, the excitement of what was possi-
ble on pilgrimage was more captivating than the assurance of what actu-
ally happened. Chrysostom’s converts would not have had to be familiar
with pilgrims’ reports to acquire such an idealized image of monasti-
cism. As the next chapter demonstrates, other types of Christian journey
literature could also sow the seeds for a fascination with the desert.
three
Imagined Journeys
Literary Paradigms for Pilgrimage
to Holy People
For this is the journey which leads to God.

Apocalypse of Paul, 19
If it is possible for the desert to have “urban legends,” the Life of

Onnophrius offers one of the best candidates. It opens with an eerie
description of pilgrimage to holy people.1 After several days’ journey
without food or water, a monk named Paphnutius discovered an
anchorite’s cave in the “farthest reaches of the desert.” After a hesitant
knock met no reply, Paphnutius leaned into the cool darkness of the
cave. As his vision adjusted to the shadows, he slowly discerned a seated
figure. Paphnutius was a patient man, but this silence was too much to
bear. He thrust his hand into the darkness to shake the hermit from his
contemplation. No sooner had he tugged on the hermit’s arm, Paphnu-
tius recalls, than it “came off in my hands and disintegrated into dust. I
felt his body all over and found that he was clearly dead and had been
1. Paphnutius, V. Onnophr., 2 (Vivian, 145–46). I follow Vivian’s translation

as well as his paragraph divisions.
79
80 / Imagined Journeys
dead a long time.” The same happened when he groped for the dead
man’s tunic hanging on the wall. Everything disintegrated beneath his
touch, leaving this pilgrim with the palpable realization that instead of
beholding ascetic splendor, he breathed its dust.
Although Paphnutius’s story is not repeated in any travelogue, it
offers rich insights into the expectations, emotions, and even the hor-
rors that pilgrimage to holy people engendered. In the previous chapter,
I focused on how pilgrims’ own writings communicate expectations.
Paphnutius’s tale reminds us that pilgrims’ ideals, hopes, and fears were
formed in and by other types of literature as well. Literary depictions of
pilgrimage merit consideration precisely because they fostered interest
in desert asceticism and helped to shape perceptions of that culture.
For late antique Christians the mutual influence between literature
and pilgrimage is well known.2 Before she set sail for Egypt, Melania the
Younger read saints’ lives “as if she were eating dessert,”3 as her biogra-
pher put it. And Jerome was familiar with (and even composed) lives of
desert saints long before he joined Paula on pilgrimage.4 It is hardly sur-
prising that accounts of holy people inspired readers to travel to them,
even after the saints were dead. Such reading by pilgrims in preparation
for their journeys causes us to rethink how we might reconstruct their
experiences. Should our investigation be limited to pilgrims’ testi-
monies, or might there be other types of evidence that might illumine
for us pilgrims’ fears, hopes, and expectations?
This chapter expands the discussion of pilgrims’ writings to consider
how texts that enticed pilgrims to visit the desert also shaped their per-
ceptions of their journey and destinations. One is tempted to begin with
the diaries of pilgrims who visited the Holy Land, but I prefer to leave
2. See Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome
and Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 93–95.
3. V. Mel. 23 (Clark, 45).
4. J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York:
Harper and Row, 1975), 61.
Imagined Journeys / 81
the discussion of holy places until the next chapter. This chapter focuses
instead on fourth- and fifth-century texts about pilgrimage to people, or,
more precisely, to destinations conceived as people. This criterion
admits a broader range of works, including imaginary journeys to bibli-
cal heroes in heaven and paradise.
The journey to a person was a familiar motif in spiritual works that
described journeying to God. The anthropomorphic language that
often appears in such works—as in references to God’s “back” or
“face”—was often accompanied by allusions to the traveler approaching
that presence. Gregory of Nyssa’s description of the soul’s ascent to God
in the Life of Moses illustrates this type of journey well. Hagiographic
episodes of holy people seeking holy people, such as Paphnutius’s
encounter, offer special insights into the idealized pilgrim. A particu-
larly good illustration of this ideal appears in Jerome’s Life of Paul the
First Hermit, in which Anthony the Great is cast in the role of a pilgrim
and thus models the desires and rewards of pilgrimage.
All these imagined journeys provided paradigms for pilgrimage to
holy people. Literary journeys illumine what pilgrims expected and how
those expectations affected their interior experiences. Moreover, as lit-
erary models, these journeys reveal habits of speech that shaped how
pilgrims later expressed their memories. If pilgrimage can be defined as
“journeying to an ideal,”5 it is important to ask what ideal of journeying
is operative.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
AND THE STUDY OF PILGRIMAGE
How can we know what pilgrims—and especially pilgrims from the

past—once felt, anticipated, or perceived? Social scientists have paid lit-
tle attention to this question, since their investigations tend to focus on
5. Alan Morinis, “Introduction,” in Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pil-

grimage, ed. Alan Morinis (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1992), 1–28, esp. 4.
external and collective behaviors rather than on inner states.6 Yet the
pilgrim’s experience is never completely beyond our reach. As Barbara
Nimri Aziz points out, we can have access to what she calls “the personal
dimensions” of the sacred journey through the myths, songs, and poetry
shared by pilgrims. “Pilgrimage,” she says, “remains strongly anchored
in our mythologies.”7 Those mythic journeys and spiritual quests are
expressions of, as well as models for, earthly pilgrimage. As Aziz
explains, “Expressing the ideals of inner experience in pilgrimage, these
literary sources create a template for actual pilgrims to follow.”8
Although Aziz’s comments pertain to her interviews with South
Asian pilgrims, she is making a larger point about the role of literary
sources in the study of pilgrimage. Myths, legends, and stories about
real and imagined journeys influence the shape and language of pil-
grims’ testimonies.9 Moreover, they “are likely to be the only means
available to know about pilgrims’ experience in the past.”10 Yet it does
6. See, for example, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pil-
grimage, ed. John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow (New York: Routledge, 1991).
An interesting exception is E. Valentine Daniel, Fluid Signs: Being a Person the
Tamil Way (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 245–87.
7. Barbara Nimri Aziz, “Personal Dimensions of the Sacred Journey: What
Pilgrims Say,” Religious Studies 23 (1987): 247–61, esp. 247. Cf. Victor Turner
and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1978) esp. 23–25. For a fruitful integration of poetic liter-
ature in the study of Hindu pilgrimage, see David Haberman, Journey through
the Twelve Forests (New York: Oxford, 1994), xiii, 50–55, 120–21.
8. Aziz, “Personal Dimensions,” 251.
9. Donald R. Howard, Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives
and Their Posterity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 10. Cf. Bar-
bara Metcalf, “The Pilgrimage Remembered: South Asian Accounts of the
Hajj,” in Muslim Travelers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination,
ed. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990), 85–107, esp. 87–89.
10. Aziz, “Personal Dimensions,” 252.
not seem necessary to take such a concessive stance. As Margaret Miles

has argued, imaginary journeys can deepen our understanding of real
ones.11 The question of how ideals and practices interact remains
underexplored in the study of pilgrimage.12 Important, too, in any study
of early Christian pilgrimage is a consideration of how texts generated
and mediated that convergence of ideal and practice.
Late antique Christians were particularly attentive to the dynamic
interaction between spiritual ideals and practices. Recent scholarship on
asceticism has extended this approach in useful directions, identifying
bodily practices that grew out of spiritual concepts in late antiquity.
James Goehring, for instance, has examined how the monastic literature
in Egypt translated the ideal of separation from the world, or
anachorēsis, into a lived reality.13 According to some ascetic biographers,
for the heroes of the desert the resurrection body was no longer a bibli-
cal hope but now a visible reality.14 And, as Susan Ashbrook Harvey has
observed of early Syrian Christianity, there was a tendency to evoke
11. Margaret R. Miles, Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an

Embodied Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 43–85.
12. Anthropologists Victor Turner and Edith Turner raise interesting possi-
bilities when they link pilgrimage and mysticism: pilgrimage is “an extroverted
mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage” (Image and Pilgrimage, 33).
13. James E. Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and
Ascetic Space in Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–96, esp. 282. See also
Antoine Guillaumont, “La conception du désert chez les moines d’Egypte,”and
“Le dépaysement comme forme d’ascèse dans le monachisme ancien,” both in
Antoine Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien: Pour une phénomenolo-
gie du monachisme (Spiritualité orientale, 30; Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de
Bellefontaine, 1979), 67–88, 89–116, respectively.
14. Anthony, Ep. 1.4.25–28 (Saint Antoine: Lettres, trans. André Louf et al.
[Spiritualité orientale, 19; Maine & Loire: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1976], 48);
cf. Pseudo-Macarius, Hom. 5.9 (Maloney, 73). See Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert
Asceticism and ‘The Body from Nowhere,’ ” JECS 2 (1994): 137–54; and David
Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995),
242–44.
“extreme action through a spirituality that called for lived symbols.”15

She points to the pillar saint Symeon the Elder, who stood with arms
extended in continuous prayer, a “lived symbol” of the psalmist’s image
of incense rising up to God.16 These are but a few examples of the ways
Christians integrated spiritual ideals and physical realities.
Amid this climate of literalizing, embodying, and enacting spiritual
ideals, it is natural to ask what spiritual ideals informed pilgrimages to
holy people. Yet the idea of manifesting spiritual ideals through physical
pilgrimage was a troublesome one for some Christians. Gregory of Nyssa,
for instance, cautioned that pilgrims run the risk of over-literalizing the
ideal of seeing God. “A change of place,” he warned, “does not amount
to approaching God, rather, wherever you are, God will come to you.”17
I elaborate on this complex statement in the next section. For now, it
bears reminding that the ever-thinning line between spiritual ideal and
spectacle alarmed some Christian leaders. Pilgrims to holy people, how-
ever, showed no misgivings over whether physical pilgrimage could dis-
rupt one’s interior journey toward God. (One need only recall Sara-
pion’s confident challenge to the contemplative nun in chapter 37 of the
Lausiac History.) Nor was travel among the excessive austerities that
worried Palladius.18 To him, pilgrimage was a practice that mirrored
15. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus
and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990), 7.
16. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “The Sense of a Stylite: Perspectives on
Simeon the Elder,” VC 42 (1988): 376–94, esp. 382–86. The liturgical dimen-
sions of these symbols are further developed in id., “The Stylite’s Liturgy: Rit-
ual and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity,” JECS 6 (1998): 523–39. Cf.
Miller, “Desert Asceticism,” 145–47.
17. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.16 (SC 363:120). Cf. HR 6.8; 9.2
18. For example, HL 25–27. On Palladius’s use of scripture to justify certain
ascetic practices, see Elizabeth Ann Schechter, “Domesticating the Desert: The
Literary Function of Scripture Citations in the Historia Lausiaca, “ unpublished
paper, summarized in AAR/SBL Abstracts 1995 (Atlanta: American Academy of
Religion, Society of Biblical Literature, 1995), 14.
spiritual goals, so long as it did not ape them or, worse yet, detract from
these ideals.
In this context, the question of whether pilgrimage undermines spir-
itual goals is a misplaced one. More helpful is the simpler question,
“Where did ancient Christians learn to imagine pilgrimage to the liv-
ing?” In the previous chapter, I considered the influence of the Bible in
shaping the imagination of pilgrims. This chapter continues this line of
inquiry by asking how travels in visionary, apocalyptic, and fictionalized
hagiographies also shaped pilgrims’ goals and expectations. I focus on
three themes that are common in literary depictions of journeys to per-
sons: the desire for a face-to-face meeting with the divine; paradisiac
descriptions of the desert; and holy persons’ journeys to even holier per-
sons.
THE JOURNEY TOWARD GOD
“When you see a man who is pure and humble,” Pachomius is reported
to have said, “that is a vision great enough. For what is greater than such
a vision, to see the invisible God in a visible man, his temple?”19
Pachomius’s comment could just as well have appeared in either the His-
tory of the Monks or the Lausiac History. It echoes the notion that holy
people offer an intimation of divine presence.20 Often in these works,
the descriptions of luminous, fiery, or even withered faces suggest that
the pilgrim’s desire is fulfilled in a face-to-face meeting.21 The notion
that the face is the locus of the holy takes on a special force in stories
about the lengths to which pilgrims went in order to see a holy person.
19. (First Greek) Life of Pachomius, 48, in Pachomian Koinonia, trans. Armand
Veilleux (3 vols.; Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1980), 1:330.
20. Peter Brown, “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” in Saints and
Virtues, ed. John Stratton Hawley (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 3–14.
21. The descriptions are the subject of chapter 5 (below). See also Miller,
“Desert Asceticism,” 141.
In these episodes, beholding the holy person’s face is a privilege reserved

for a few. Melania the Elder admitted to Palladius that she never beheld
the immured Alexandra “face to face.”22 Other pilgrims were devastated
when denied even a glimpse of the ascetic’s face.
Many pilgrims settled for the solace of proximity and remained out-
side the cell,23 but some refused to take no for an answer. Both the
author of the History of the Monks and Theodoret tell stories of nameless
noblewomen who persisted (and schemed) until they saw the ascetic’s
face.24 The elusiveness of the ascetic face is even more dramatic in the
story of Cyrus, a monk who lived in Egypt during the fifth century. His
biographer, Pambo, makes much of the fact that he alone was permitted
to see Cyrus’s face,25 no doubt a privilege that enhanced Pambo’s
authority among his audience. And Pambo recounts even greater privi-
leges: in a vision, Pambo watched Christ himself enter the cell and kiss
Cyrus on the lips.26 The fact that Pambo failed to recognize Christ, tak-
ing him for a monk, is significant insofar as it makes perfectly under-
standable to the reader why Pambo did not receive a kiss. The reader
can recognize a clear order of spiritual authority: Christ comes face to
face with Cyrus, who in turn comes face to face with Pambo. This line-
age of encounters with the divine ultimately might benefit the pilgrim
who gazes into a monk’s face.
The ambiguous status of the holy face as an object beheld or withheld
is also found patristic discussions of Moses’ ascent to God (Exodus 33).
22. HL 5.2 (Meyer, 36).

23. For example, V. Ant. 48; cf. 62, 88.
24. HM 1.6; cf. HR 3.22.
25. “Truly, no human shall see my face except Abba Pambo” (Vivian, 33).
Pambo’s experiences are described in “The Life of Apa Cyrus” (Vivian, Journey-
ing to God, 25–36). Internal evidence suggests a terminus post quem of 474; see
ibid., 25 n. 2. Theodoret claimed a similar privilege for himself with regard to
James of Cyrrhestica (HR 22.3).
26. “Life of Apa Cyrus” (Vivian, Journeying to God, 34).
Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses exposes the problems of withholding

the divine face. The work is divided into two parts: first, a historia (here
meaning a narrative) about the exploits of Moses described in Exodus
and Numbers, followed by the spiritual interpretation of the narrative,
or theoria. In the theoria Gregory explores the implications of Moses’
ascent up Mount Sinai and his efforts to meet God face to face.
In Gregory’s reading, Moses represents the soul’s approach toward
God, a quest that is endless but never futile.27 Gregory underscores the
point: Moses neither “stopped in his ascent, nor did he set a limit for
himself in his upward course . . . because he always found a step higher
than the one he attained.”28 This continuous ascent did not bring him
to the face of God; instead, he perpetually contemplated God’s backside.
Gregory describes the spiritual paradox: “And the bold request which
goes up the mountains of desire asks this: to enjoy the Beauty not in
mirrors and reflections, but face to face. The divine voice granted what
was requested in what was denied. . . . The munificence of God assented
to the fulfillment of his desire, but did not promise any cessation or sati-
ety of the desire.”29 In identifying an insatiable longing to see God,
Gregory offers a rationale for pilgrims to the living: the prospect of gaz-
ing at a face that is partially or even completely hidden is not to be
feared. Such occlusion, ironically, induces deeper and more intense
modes of seeing. As Gregory explains, “One must always, by looking at
what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more.”30
No amount of desire, however, could overcome the fundamental par-
adox of God’s corporeality. Even as Gregory insists that God is by
27. For a clear introduction to the concept of “eternal progress,” see Gregory
of Nyssa: The Life of Moses, trans. Everett Ferguson and Abraham Malherbe
(CWS; New York: Paulist, 1978), 12–13.
28. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Moysis, 227 (Ferguson/Malherbe, 113–14).
29. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Moysis, 232 (Ferguson/Malherbe, 114–15).
30. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Moysis, 239 (Ferguson/Malherbe, 116).
nature incorporeal and invisible, he retains the language of the back and
the face.31 In his Commentary on the Song of Songs, Gregory revisits that
paradox, again through the Moses story:
Moses still had an insatiable desire for more. He implored God to

see him face to face, despite the fact the scripture already says that
he had been allowed to speak with God face to face. . . . “If I have
found favor before you, show me your face clearly.” . . . God passed
Moses by at the divine place in the rock shadowed over by his hand.
Moses could hardly see God’s back even after he had passed by. I
believe we are taught that the person desiring to see God can behold
the desired One by always following him. The contemplation of
God’s face is a never-ending journey toward him accomplished by
following right behind the Word.32
This passage is stuffed with God’s body parts—face, hand, back—with

the face as the object of Moses’ desire and destination.
If we recall that Gregory himself was once a pilgrim, the overlap
between his notion of progress and his views of actual pilgrimage seems
even greater. In a letter on Jerusalem pilgrimage, he offered several
arguments against the practice: some practical, some scriptural, and
some theological. His final argument, interestingly enough, is spatial:
“A change of place does not amount to approaching God,” but “God
will come to you, if he finds the inn (katag∆gion) of your soul such that
the Lord can inhabit (ònoike^w) and walk about (òmperipate^w) in you.”33
Drawing on pilgrimage vocabulary, Gregory describes the soul as a set-
ting for pilgrimage, where God becomes the pilgrim, walking, peram-
31. See Everett Ferguson, “God’s Infinity and Man’s Mutability: Perpetual
Progress according to Gregory of Nyssa,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 19
(1973): 59–78, esp. 63–64.
32. Gregory of Nyssa, In Cant. 12 (McCambley, 219).
33. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.16 (SC 363:120).
bulating, and occupying the guesthouse or inn (katag∆gion).34 Clearly,

Gregory’s aim is to substitute a spatial movement toward God with a
nonspatial movement of God toward the soul. But this metaphoric
reversal works only if God is conceived as a pilgrim, embodied and
occupying spaces. Thus, even for Gregory of Nyssa, who resisted any
notion of a visible or embodied God,35 the embodied language of pil-
grimage was irresistible.
Gregory of Nazianzus, a close friend of Gregory of Nyssa, also found
in Moses’ ascent a personal metaphor for the pursuit of God. In his sec-
ond Theological Oration, Gregory announced to his Constantinopolitan
audience in 380, “I eagerly ascend the mount.”36 His efforts to under-
stand God are presented as a journey to a person: “I was running with a
mind to see God and so it was that I ascended the mount. . . . But when
I directed my gaze I scarcely saw the averted figure of God.”37 Although
he insists that “to know God is hard, to describe him impossible,”38 and
that “God is not a body,” he can also speak of seeking God’s face.39
Despite language that strikes us as frankly corporeal, the Cappadocian
theologians were not timid about using terms connoting parts of God’s
body. They would probably have been surprised by how rapidly such
embodied language was dropped from later interpretations of Moses’
ascent. In the sixth-century Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius avoids
34. Lampe, PGL, 706b, s.v. “katag∆gion.”

35. See Robert S. Brightman, “Apophatic Theology and Divine Infinity in
St. Gregory of Nyssa,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 18 (1973): 97–114.
36. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28.2 (Norris, 224). On the metaphor of
ascent in Christian spirituality, see Miles, Practicing Christianity, 63–86.
37. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28.3 (Norris, 225–26). Cf. Exodus
33:22–23.
38. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28.5 (Norris, 226).
39. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 28, 4–5; on the connection to Life of Moses,
see Paul Gallay, Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 27–31 (Discours théologiques) (SC
250:106–7 n. 2).
God’s body altogether, explaining that Moses “does not meet God him-
self, but contemplates not him who is invisible, but rather where he
dwells.”40 What Pseudo-Dionysius leaves us with, after removing all
references to hands, face, or back, is a divine body missing in action.
Moses, like Paphnutius in the cave, finds himself alone contemplating
an empty space.
Pseudo-Dionysius’s modifications notwithstanding, the ideal of jour-
neying toward a divine human body was a powerful one in the fourth
and fifth centuries. Christian liturgists also seized on this motif. Cate-
chumens in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s church at Antioch were invited to
understand the Eucharist as a visualization of future salvation: “We wait
here in faith until we ascend into heaven and set out on our journey to
our Lord, where we shall not see through a glass and in a riddle but shall
look face to face.”41 Salvation is achieved by a journey that culminates
with the vision of God’s face. The central mystery of Christian faith, the
Eucharist, anticipates that journey.
In the Christian imagination of the fourth century, the concept of the
journey to God implied a desire to see God face to face. The sentiment
40. Mystical Theology 3⫽1000D (Luibheid, 137): Cf. the discussion of bibli-
cal corporeal language in relation to God, id., Divine Names 8.597B (Luibheid,
57). For background on Pseudo-Dionysius’s anagogical theology, see Paul
Rorem, “The Uplifting Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius,” in Christian Spiritu-
ality, vol. 1: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn and John
Meyendorff (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 132–51, esp. 143–44. See also Paul
Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their
Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 189–92. On Pseudo-
Dionysius and the larger problem of representing God in linguistic terms, see
Averil Cameron, “The Language of Images: The Rise of Icons and Christian
Representation,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood (Studies in
Church History; Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 1–42, esp. 24–29. On various inter-
pretations of Moses’ ascent, see Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies
in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1960), 215.
41. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hom. 5, in Woodbrooke Studies 6, ed. A. Min-
gana (Cambridge: Heffer & Sons, 1933), 82.
was so powerful that it resisted any theological reservations about cor-

poreal language for God. Stories about journeying toward a person (or
toward God) spoke both to beginners in the faith, such as the catechu-
mens in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s congregation, and monastics, such as
those addressed in the Life of Moses. It should come as little surprise,
therefore, to find a similar desire for a face-to-face encounter with holy
men in the writings of pilgrims, who, like Moses, were equally ener-
gized and frustrated by the desire to behold the divine.
In these echoes of Moses’ ascent, pilgrims to the living would dis-
cover how elusive but glorious the divine face could be. As much as pil-
grims identified with Moses, however, they nevertheless sought to
behold many faces. This desire was patterned less on Moses’ ascent than
on other types of tales.
THE JOURNEY TO PARADISE
Tours of Paradise figure prominently in pilgrims’ writings, since the

desert was often thought to be closer to Paradise.42 The History of the
Monks describes a journey the desert father Patermuthius experienced:
he had been “transported physically to paradise . . . and had seen a vast
company of saints.”43 As proof of this embodied experience, he returned
with a “large, choice fig” from Paradise, a fruit with which he healed
both the sick and the skeptical.44 Patermuthius’s journey echoes almost
42. On this theme, see Jean Daniélou, “Terre et Paradis chez les pères de
l’Eglise,” Eranos Jahrbuch 22 (1953): 433–72.
43. HM 10.21 (Russell, 85). On ascent and return journeys, see Jacqueline
Amat, Songes et visions: L’au-delà dans la littérature latine tardive (Paris: Études
Augustiniennes, 1985), 363–66; Claude Carrozi, Le voyage de l’âme dans l’au-delà
dans la littérature latine, Ve–XIIIe siècles (Paris: Boccard, 1994).
44. HM 10.21–22. This fruit is even more significant precisely because it
imitates fourth-century pilgrim practices. Bringing home a fruit from the sacred
destination was a practice that went back to the earliest days of holy land pil-
grimage. These souvenirs, or, “blessings,” (eulogiae), as they were called, not
only were regarded as a gesture of monastic hospitality but also, as many pil-
verbatim the prologue of the History of the Monks. In both instances, the
author describes “seeing” a “great number” of holy figures, combining
variant forms of flr_w with pl±qov.45
As the language crosses over from desert to Heaven and back, so too
monastic identities shift. In the Life of Onnophrius the desert is so near
the heavens that the distinction is easily forgotten. As Onnophrius says
to the pilgrim Paphnutius: “If desert anchorites desire to see anyone,
they are taken up into the heavenly places where they see all the saints
and greet them. . . . Afterwards, they return to their bodies and they
continue to feel comforted for a long time. If they travel to another
world (aæ∆n) through the joy which they have seen, they do not even
remember that this world (kfismov) exists.”46 In this desert there is no
solitude, because heavenly companions are readily available. And such
crossings are so common that monastics can enter the “heavenly places”
when they please. Closer to homecoming weekend than the apostle
Paul’s bewildered memories of the “third heaven,” Onnophrius’s Par-
adise represents a closing of the gap between heaven and earth.
Also unlike the “third heaven” where Paul heard the mysteries, the
“heavenly places” here are visually alluring, offering perceptions so
intense that all memories of this world are erased. The emphasis on visu-
ality in Paradise is underscored in Paphnutius’s response to this speech:
“Blessed am I that I have been worthy to see your holy face and hear your
grims later claimed, were believed to hold magical powers even away from the
holy places. See, for example, It. Eg. 3.6–7; 11.1; 15.6; 21.3. On the variety of
eulogiae and their powers, see Cynthia Hahn, “Loca Sancta Souvenirs: Sealing
the Pilgrim’s Experience,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert Ousterhout
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 85–96; and Gary Vikan, “Early
Byzantine Pilgrimage Devotionalia as Evidence of the Appearance of Pilgrimage
Shrines,” in JAC Suppl. 20, 1:377–88.
45. Cf. HM prol. 10: e¡don . . . pl±qov Üpeiron monax‹n; 10.21 ìwrake^nai
pl±qov jg¥wn.
46. Paphnutius, V. Onnophr. 17–18 (Vivian, 156–57, modified).
sweet words.”47 By his emphasis on seeing and hearing the holy man, the
pilgrim identifies with the monks who see and hear those in the heavenly
places. This-worldly and otherworldly journeys intertwine in these
accounts; everyone seems to “travel to another world through joy.”48
In contrast to the apostle Paul, who reports having “heard things
that are not to be told” (2 Cor 12:4), it seems odd that Onnophrius
chooses to broadcast the visual experiences of his journey. Tours of Par-
adise were common in the Jewish and Christian literature of antiquity.49
The Apocalypse of Paul, or the Visio Pauli, a late-fourth-century work
deriving from Egypt, became widely known not only in Greek but also
in Latin, Coptic, and Syrian translations.50 This popular work, com-
posed within a decade or so of the historiai, offers another literary model
of physical journeys to holy people.51
47. Ibid., 18, a sentiment echoed by the apostle Paul in Visio Pauli 22.5 (in
Claude Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-delà: Recherches sur L’apocalypse de Paul [Aix-
en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1994]): “Ego autem
admiratus sum, et benedixi dominum Deum in omnibus quae uidi.”
48. Paphnutius, V. Onnophr. 17 (Vivian, 156).
49. See Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apoca-
lypses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Death, Ecstasy, and Other
Worldly Journeys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1995), esp. Alan F. Segal, “Paul and the Beginning of
Jewish Mysticism,” 93–120.
50. Text in Carozzi, Eschatologie et au-delà, 186–263. James K. Elliott’s
English translation, which is based on older editions, is available in The Apoc-
ryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 620–44. The consulships
mentioned in the introduction point to a terminus post quem of 388 (Visio Pauli,
1; Elliott, 617, 620). Those who cast doubts on R. Casey’s argument for an
early-third-century origin (“The Apocalypse of Paul,” JTS 34 [1933]: 28, 31)
include Martha Himmelfarb (Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and
Christian Literature [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983],
18–19) and Pierluigi Piovanelli (“Les origines de l’Apocalypse de Paul reconsid-
érées,” Apocrypha 4 [1993]: 25–64, esp. 55–57).
51. Piovanelli dates the work to 395–416, a span that would coincide with
The Apocalypse of Paul takes the reader on a magnificent tour of Par-

adise, to see its flora and fauna and to hear the sun, moon, stars, and sea
speak to the Lord.52 Prominent on this tour are monks as well as bibli-
cal prophets and patriarchs.53 Thus Paul meets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel and Amos.54 As he moves to higher realms, he meets those who
“have given hospitality to strangers,” specifically the patriarchs Abra-
ham, Isaac, Lot, and Job, “and other saints,” who praise Paul for having
“observed humanity and helped pilgrims.”55 Monks cohabit easily with
biblical heroes, and, conversely, biblical heroes behave as monks, visit-
ing each other and extending hospitality.56
Another striking parallel with the History of the Monks lies in the
many references to the facial or bodily appearance of those in heaven.
Paul witnesses several grotesque faces, including “angels without
mercy” with buckteeth and eyes that “shone like the morning star . . .
and from the hairs of their head or from their mouth sparks of fire went
out.”57 More common are the luminous faces of the righteous. Thus
Enoch’s countenance, like David’s, “shone as the sun.”58 And the Cop-
tic version specifies that prophets’ faces “shone like the sun, [only] seven
times [brighter].”59 Later in the journey, Paul sees “three men coming
. . . very beautiful in the likeness of Christ, and their forms were shin-
the composition of the History of the Monks (395–400) and anticipate the Lausiac
History (ca. 420–21) by as little as five years (“Les origines,” 55).
52. Visio Pauli 22–23; 4–6.
53. Monastics appear both in Heaven and Hell; see, for example, Visio Pauli
9, 24, 26, 29, 39, and 40.
54. Visio Pauli, 25.
55. Visio Pauli 27 (Elliott, 631).
56. For example, HM 1.13, 62; 5.5; 8.55; 14.13. On monastic visiting and
hospitality, see Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), esp. 147–50.
57. Visio Pauli 11.3 (Elliott, 623); cf. “very black faces” of adulterers and for-
nicators (38).
58. Enoch: Visio Pauli 20 (Elliott, 628); David: Visio Pauli 29.
59. Visio Pauli (Coptic) in E. A. Wallis Budge, Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the
ing.” Even when Paul requires the assistance of his guide to identify
holy people in the distance, as with these three men, who turn out to be
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,60 the text makes frequent reference to the
fact that this is an embodied journey.61
The holy people Paul meets appear to be engaged in no activity
except to approach Paul, greet him, and be seen. Any further move-
ment, it seems, might interrupt the larger purpose of Paul’s journey: to
gaze on figures from the sacred past. What exactly he is gazing at is also
difficult to determine. Instead of furnishing details about the dress, hair,
eyes, and other features of the patriarchs and prophets,62 this author is
more likely to differentiate degrees of beauty or brilliance. Thus, Moses
and Lot are described as “beautiful of countenance,” while Job is “very
beautiful of countenance”; a Coptic version takes it one step further,
mentioning Adam, “taller than them all and very beautiful.”63 While I
reserve a fuller discussion of these descriptions for chapter 5, these
examples already indicate an intense interest in reporting on the visual
experience of bodies.64
Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1915; repr. 1977) fol. 33b
(trans. p. 1078).
60. Visio Pauli 47 (Elliott, 640). Cf. 29 (on eventually recognizing David).
61. Whereas the Visio Pauli opens in doubt as to whether Paul experienced
his tour of Heaven “in the body or out of the body” (prol. quoting 2 Cor 12:2),
the work concludes on the side of embodiment: the Virgin Mary refers to the
saints who “pray that [Paul] might come here in the body that they might see
[him] . . . in the flesh” (Visio Pauli 46; Elliott, 640). Cf. the Syriac description of
Abel ( J. Perkins, trans. in Journal of the American Oriental Society 8 [1864]:
183–212, excerpts appended to Elliott’s translation). Here Abel rushes to see the
Apostle, since “there will be deliverance for us if we see him while he is still in
the body” (Elliott, 644).
62. As in the self-description provided by Noah “in the time of the flood”:
“In those one hundred years not a hair of my head grew in length, nor did my
garments become soiled” (Visio Pauli 50; Elliott, 643).
63. Visio Pauli 47–49 (Elliott, 640–42; emphasis mine). Coptic: Elliott, 644.
64. As in the vision of Christ (44), when the tormented cry out in unison,
“For since we have seen you we have refreshment”; cf. the references to per-
All these descriptions of otherworldly journeys, whether in the body

or out of the body, point to the common desire to see a holy person in
the flesh. The narrator underscores this desire not just by presenting
luminous bodies of the heavenly dwellers but also by reversing roles so
as to make these figures pilgrims to Paul. Thus an exuberant Noah
makes pilgrimage “saying, ‘Blessed are you, Paul, and blessed am I
because I saw you.’ ” The Virgin Mary announces to Paul that she
stands ahead of “all the righteous men” who are “coming to meet
[Paul],” because they “desire to see him in the flesh.”65 At first Paul is
baffled by these supplicants and turns to his angel to ask, “Sir, who is
this?” Yet this role reversal does not change the fact that pilgrimage here
is to an embodied destination, as the copious details regarding dress,
hair, and faces demonstrate.66 This emphasis on visual perception of
bodily sanctity is not limited to otherworldly journeys, as a considera-
tion of saints’ lives will demonstrate.
THE JOURNEY TO THE SAINT
So far, my discussion has focused on otherworldly encounters with

embodied sanctity. In this final section, I turn to this-worldly encoun-
ters between pilgrims and holy people, as described in popular saints’
lives. During the fourth and fifth centuries, anyone familiar with
Athanasius’s Life of Anthony would have known of the practice of visiting
holy people.67 In an effort to rival Athanasius’s hero, Jerome composed
the Life of Paul the First Hermit. Writing some twenty years after the Life
of Anthony first appeared, Jerome acknowledged the growing popularity
of the Greek and Latin versions of Athanasius’s work and borrowed sub-
ceiving those “coming from afar” or perceived from afar: e.g., 29 (David), 47
(Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), 48 (Moses), 49 (Lot and Job), 50 (Noah).
65. Visio Pauli 50 (Elliott, 642); 46 (Elliott, 640).
66. Visio Pauli 50 (Elliott, 643); cf. Coptic ending, Elliott, 644.
67. A fuller discussion appears in chapter 5 (below).
stantially from it.68 Yet whereas Athanasius’s interest remained focused

on the holy man and his battles—with wild animals, demons, and
heretics—Jerome swiftly reversed the lens to direct the reader’s atten-
tion to the pilgrim, Anthony himself. As Jerome remarks, Anthony may
have “stirred others to emulation” through ascetic withdrawal, but he
ought best be remembered as a pilgrim in search of “another and better
monk.”69 Jerome insists that a less famous monk named Paul of Thebes
was the “first monk to dwell in the desert.”70 Whether Paul of Thebes
was real mattered little to Jerome.71 Nor did the question prevent the
Life of Paul from gaining a large audience, which grew with each new
translation.72 Between the Life of Anthony and the Life of Paul, then,
Anthony undergoes two significant transformations: from exemplar of
desert ascetics to an imitator of them, and, more important, from pil-
grims’ goal to pilgrim proper.
Lest we concern ourselves too much with Anthony’s demotion,73 we
should consider what the work says about pilgrimage. Pilgrimage shapes
68. Jerome, V. Pauli 1, following Harvey’s paragraph divisions. On the Life of

Anthony’s widespread influence, see, for example, Jerome, Ep. 127.5; G. J. M.
Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine (SC 400; Paris: Cerf, 1994)
68–70; Quasten, 3:40; Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to
the Literature and Its Background (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 81, 302 n. 81;
Rousseau, Ascetics, 3; and Bernard Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille
de Scythopolis (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 44–45.
69. Jerome, V. Pauli 7 (Harvey, 363).
71. The extent to which the narrative and even its subject, Paul of Thebes,
are fictional is debated. See Rousseau, Ascetics, 133; Quasten, 4:237 (for
Chalchis); Kelly, Jerome, 60–61 (for Antioch); Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of
St. Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition and the Making of a Saint (Lund:
Lund University Press, 1990), 172, 175.
72. PL 23.17–28. Kelly ( Jerome, 60) mentions six Greek translations, one
Coptic, one Syriac, and one Ethiopic translation.
73. E. Coleiro, “St. Jerome’s Lives of the Hermits,” VC 11 (1957): 161–78,
esp. 168–70.
the characters and structure of the Life of Paul. After a relatively short
description of the sixteen-year-old Paul’s decision to settle in the unin-
habited desert, Jerome abruptly moves to the holy man’s 113th year. By
this time, Anthony too is quite elderly, but when a dream instructs him
to seek out “another and better monk,” he immediately sets out on the
journey.74 Along the way he encounters strange and fearsome creatures:
first a centaur, then a “dwarf, whose nostrils were joined together, with
horns growing out of his forehead, and with the legs and feet of a goat.”75
In this new role, Anthony is made to experience the hopes, frustrations,
and fears of the very pilgrims he once turned away. Whereas other pil-
grims’ tales reassure readers with tales about holy men who tame wild
animals and rescue travelers from savage beasts,76 Jerome’s offers an
entirely different picture. His beasts may at first frighten pilgrims but
ultimately become their greatest allies. The centaur offers roadside assis-
tance by pointing Anthony in the right direction, and the dwarf supplies
him with dates “as pledges of peace.”77 In this Oz-like, pilgrim-friendly
desert, the traveler, as well as the monks, enjoys a paradisiac existence.
More so than the journey, the destination highlights how frightening
desert pilgrimage can be. When Anthony finally reaches the cave (hav-
ing been led there by a thirsty she-wolf ), he hesitates before entering.
Although Jerome sets up the reader for a horrifying discovery like that
of Paphnutius, he takes the story in a different direction. As Anthony
follows the trail of a sound and then a dim, distant light, he accidentally
knocks against a stone and startles Paul, who immediately slams his cell
door shut. More persistent than the pilgrims described by Athanasius,
Jerome’s Anthony now must see at all costs.78 Shut out from Paul’s cell,

76. For example, HM 4.3; 9.6–10; 12.5–9; 20.12.
77. Jerome, V. Pauli 7–8 (Harvey, 363); cf. 10.
78. That desire to see Paul contrasts with the privileged role of hearing in
Athanasius’s Life of Anthony. Apart from the theophanic episode (V. Ant. 14),
Anthony begs, “I realize that I am not worthy of your glance. Nonethe-

less, I shall not go away until I have seen you.”79 Although Paul has not
yet revealed himself to his visitor, he provides a detailed verbal self-
portrait: “Look at the unkempt hair covering a body decayed with age.
This is the man whom you have sought with such hard work. You see
before you a man soon to become dust.”80 All the visual cues in this pas-
sage signal the beginning of the visit.
Even deeper visual experiences mark the farewell episodes. As part of
his preparation for death, Paul instructs Anthony to bury him in a cloak
Anthony had received from Athanasius. Jerome did not need to explain
to his audience how potent this garment was as a symbol of spiritual
authority; that much was already apparent in Athanasius’s Life of
Anthony.81 More miraculous are Paul’s clairvoyance and prophetic pow-
ers, which trigger a visionary experience for Anthony: “Anthony was
dumbfounded at hearing that Paul knew of Athanasius and his cloak. He
saw, it seemed, Christ himself in Paul. Worshipping God dwelling
within Paul, Anthony dared not reply.”82 The recognition scene,
extended by visual exchanges, underscores the importance of seeing
holy faces as a means to seeing Christ himself. Missing here is a verbal
response to that vision.
Anthony finds words to describe what he has seen only after he has
left Paul. After much pleading from his disciples, Anthony finally
divulges the experience in three simple phrases: “I have seen Elijah, I
have seen John in the desert, and truly have I seen Paul in paradise.”83
Athanasius stresses the auditory dimensions of Anthony’s sanctity, both in the

divine voices he hears (e.g., V. Ant. 10, 49, 60, 80) and in the extensive dis-
courses.
81. V. Ant. 91.
82. Jerome, V. Pauli 12 (Harvey, 366–67). On seeing Christ in the person of
a monk, cf. Jerome, Ep. 108.14 (NPNF 1.6.202).
Then he gathers the cloak and returns to the desert. As Jerome

describes Anthony’s hasty return, “he thirsted for him, he longed to see
(videre desiderans) him, he embraced him with his eyes and mind (oculis ac
mente complectens).”84 Such decidedly visual language crystallizes the pil-
grim’s purpose: to see the holy.
As all these visual desires and visionary experiences attest, the Life of
Paul defines pilgrimage to people as a visual practice. For Jerome, at
least, pilgrimage to holy people synthesizes the ideals of spiritual pil-
grimage (seeing God face to face), the paradisiac tour (seeing biblical
figures), and physical pilgrimage (seeing the desert ascetic). Anthony’s
remark about seeing Elijah, “John in the desert,” and “Paul in paradise,”
itself unites these face-to-face encounters in a setting where the desert
and Paradise elide. The fullest meaning of this remark becomes clear
only when it is read against the background of allegorical journeys and
apocalyptic voyages, where devotions are determined by the process and
effects of vision.
Just as Palladius artfully integrated spiritual and physical journeys in
his travelogue, so other texts achieve a synthesis between this-worldly
and otherworldly journeys to holy people. To some extent, the imagi-
nary journeys discussed here echo details from actual pilgrims’ prac-
tice. But it is equally clear how much pilgrims borrowed from these
invented journeys. The History of the Monks, with tours of Paradise and
gleaming faces of biblical prophets, shows how deeply pilgrims inte-
grated their own practices with the spiritual quest. Action and ideal,
perception and desire all merge in the travelogues, so that physical
journey and spiritual progress are indistinguishable. From a pilgrim’s
perspective, is there any meaningful difference between the biblical fig-
ures who behave as monks in the Apocalypse of Paul and a monk who
behaves as a biblical figure in the Life of Paul? Here is religious imagi-
nation that draws no firm distinction between holy men such as Paul,
who lives “a heavenly life on earth,” and those who live an earthly life

in Heaven, as the Apocalypse of Paul would have us see the patriarchs,

angels, and prophets.85
It becomes easier to understand from these otherworldly journeys
and fictionalized pilgrimages how actual pilgrims could draw from these
stories the metaphors and expectations by which to represent their own
journeys. When Anthony uttered his three phrases about Elijah, John,
and Paul, he signaled to his disciples (and to Jerome’s audience) that pil-
grimage to people is about movement across both space and time. One
seeks out holy people to encounter faces from a biblical time, to look the
past in the eye. The apostle Paul’s tour of Paradise offers a similar
reminder: to be prepared for special moments of recognition, when
unfamiliar silhouettes in the distance become the distinctive faces of
Elijah or Abraham. And that moment, as we have seen in these ancient
travelogues and imaginary journeys, tends to be not only visual but also
biblical. The places may change from mountain to desert to heavens,
but the sensory dimensions of the experience are constant: vision
defines the moment of recognition, whereby the gaze is returned in a
face-to-face encounter with a figure from the biblical past. Why vision,
in particular, was invested with the power to perceive and penetrate the
past is the subject of the next chapter.

four
Pilgrims and the Eye of Faith
All travel writing is a form of seeing for the reader, who must rely on the
eyes of another. Some travelers draw attention to that responsibility, as
Egeria did. In her diary, the fourth-century pilgrim promised her read-
ers that if she described the holy places in sufficient detail, her audience
might “see more completely (pervidere) what happened in these places”
when they read the Bible.1 She knew that travel writing both represents
what has been seen and creates what can be seen.2
Travel writers’ claims to re-present sensory perceptions provide a
useful point of entry into pilgrims’ religious experiences. Pilgrims to
the Holy Land record physical details about what they saw, such as how
shrines and markers were decorated and designed.3 More interesting
for our purposes are the subtle messages these reminiscences carry
1. It. Eg. 5.8 (Wilkinson, 97–98, modified). Cf. 7.1; 12.3.

2. As François Hartog explains, “To describe is to see and make seen. It is to
say what you have seen. . . . But if you can only say what what you have seen,
you can only see what can be said” (The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation
of the Other in the Writing of History, trans. Janet Lloyd [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988], 248).
3. For example, on the value of Egeria’s testimony for reconstructing the
appearance of the Holy Sepulchre, see Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing:
102
Pilgrims and the Eye of Faith / 103
about the value placed on visual experiences. The intensity of those

experiences suggests to modern interpreters that pilgrims did not nec-
essarily see the way we see. As cultural anthropologists and art historians
point out, certain features of sensory perception are universal, including
the physiological structure of the eye. Yet the quality of perceptions can
differ according to the complex attitudes and beliefs assigned to sensory
impressions. Thus it is helpful to distinguish between “vision”—the
physiological and neurological processes involved in the act of seeing—
and “visuality”—the meanings, properties, or values that a given culture
assigns to sight.4 “Vision” is explored through the study of optics, oph-
thalmology, neurology, and other disciplines concerned with the
mechanics of sight. Understanding “visuality,” however, is largely a
reconstructive process, one that considers how language, symbols,
myths, and values become attached to the act of seeing. Exploring visu-
ality in a particular cultural context requires careful attention to the
poetics and organization of visual experiences.
This chapter explores the visuality inherent in the recorded memo-
ries of pilgrims to the Holy Land, many of whom testify that their most
transformative experiences were linked to the act of seeing. Pilgrims to
the holy places have left us with more testimonies to their visual experi-
ences, spanning two centuries of reports, than those who traveled in
The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints’ Shrines,” Speculum 72

(1997): 1079–1106, esp. 1084–86; and for liturgical practices, see John F. Bal-
dovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and
Meaning of the Stational Liturgy (Rome: Pontificale Institutum Studiorum Ori-
entalium, 1987), 55–64.
4. I have been influenced by Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in
Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 29–40; Martin
Jay, “Vision in Context: Reflections and Refractions,” in Vision in Context: His-
torical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, ed. Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay
(New York : Routledge, 1996), 1–12; The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A
Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, ed. David Howes (Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 1991); James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature
104 / Pilgrims and the Eye of Faith
search of living saints. With a better understanding of how and why pil-
grims to the holy places valued visual experience, one can eventually
arrive at a deeper appreciation for the visual experiences of pilgrims to
the living.
My investigation focuses less on how the holy places appeared than
on what it meant for pilgrims to behold these places. Two main questions
emerge: How did pilgrims use their senses, and what qualities of vision
were inherent in those perceptions? The first question relates to the
importance of visual perceptions. Pilgrims to holy places valued the
sense of sight as a primary mode for religious understanding, even when
their devotions at the holy places became increasingly tactile. Although
a tactile visuality might appear a contradiction in terms, it was not so for
the ancients, as essayists, philosophers, novelists, and poets of the day
articulated the powers of visual perception.
VISION AT THE HOLY PLACES
“The man who has seen Judaea with his own eyes . . . will gaze more
clearly upon Holy Scripture.”5 This comment by Jerome alerts us to an
important feature of pilgrimage in the late fourth century. Although pil-
grimage engages every physical sense, late antique Christian pilgrims
believed that seeing offered special benefits. In diaries and letters they
claimed a more genuine understanding of scripture precisely because the
sense of sight allowed them to internalize and embody that knowledge.
The vocabulary of pilgrimage was primarily visual. Writers described
pilgrimage as “seeing with the senses (aæsqht‹v) the holy places” and
of Seeing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). For antiquity, see David
Chidester, Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1992), esp. 1–24.
5. Jerome, Praef. in Lib. Paralip. (PL 29.401; quoted in E. D. Hunt, Holy
Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire (A.D. 312–460) ([Oxford: Clarendon,
1982], 94).
“seeing the signs of Christ’s sojourn.”6 According to the Syrian bishop

Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the purpose of pilgrimage was to “feast [one’s]
eyes” on the holy places.7 One prominent feature of Egeria’s Latin is her
frequent use of verbs for seeing used in the sense of “visiting.”8
Habits of expression can reflect habits of viewing. In letters home,
pilgrims described both visual and visionary experiences. One privilege
Christian pilgrims claimed was to “see” what others had only heard.
Jerome put it this way: “I entered Jerusalem, I saw a host of marvels, and
with the judgment of my eyes I verified things of which I had previously
learned by report.”9 When the Empress Helena entered Jerusalem, as
Paulinus, bishop of Nola, describes her experiences, she “avidly visited
all the places . . . which bore the marks of God’s presence. She was eager
to absorb through her eyes the faith which she had gained by devoted
listening and reading.”10 Whether to verify information, as Jerome did,
or to “absorb” it, as Helena did, both pilgrims deepened their knowl-
edge of the scriptures through the faculty of sight.
With such an emphasis on seeing, it is puzzling that these pilgrims
tell us little about what they actually saw. The site of Jesus’ crucifixion,
for example, appears strikingly empty in Jerome’s description of Paula’s
6. A distinction made by Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 3.3 (SC 363:126–127). On

the frequent use of the verbs see and was shown in pilgrims’ writings, see Robert
Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 300 n. 46; Pierre Maraval, Lieux saints et
pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris:
Cerf, 1985), 137–38.
7. HR 9.2 (Price, 82).
8. G. F. M. Vermeer, Observations sur le vocabulaire du pèlerinage chez Égérie et
chez Antonin de Plaisance (Latinitas Christianorum Primaeva 19; Utrecht:
Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1965), 42, citing It. Eg. 19.4 as an example: “Ac sic ergo
vidi in eadem civitate martyria plurima nec non et sanctos monachos.”
9. Jerome, Apol. 3.22, translated in J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings,
and Controversies (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975), 124.
10. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 31.5 (Walsh, 2:130).
veneration: she “fell down and worshipped before the Cross as if she
could see the Lord hanging on it.”11 Paula’s viewing assumes greater
importance than the physical artifacts others might see at the same
place. A similar visionary experience occurred at Bethlehem: “With the
eye of faith, she saw a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, weeping in
the Lord’s manger,” along with the Magi, Mary, Joseph, and the shep-
herds.12 Were images of Christ’s birth displayed at the cave of the
Nativity? On this matter, both Jerome and the archaeological and liter-
ary records are silent.13 Jerome shows no interest in satisfying our
curiosity about what the eyes of the body saw. He directs the reader’s
attention instead to the “eye of faith” and its power to conjure and dis-
play a biblical event.
In these accounts, the “eye of faith” signals a vivid perception of a
past biblical event that is triggered by seeing the physical holy place.
One might refer to these visualizing moments as “biblical realism,” by
which I mean instances when the viewer claims to become an eyewitness
to a biblical event. Paula’s experience of the Nativity resembles a type of
consciousness that Ewert Cousins, a historian of spirituality, has called
“mysticism of the historical event,” by which “one recalls a significant
11. Jerome, Ep. 108.9.2. See John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the
Crusades (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1977), 49 n. 29. Although Paula’s expres-
sion is more than visual (kissing the stone, licking the spot where the Lord’s
body had lain), vision triggers this multisensory reponse.
12. Jerome, Ep. 108.10 (Fremantle, 199).
13. As Hunt (Holy Land Pilgrimage, 104) comments: “It has to be admitted
that, if pilgrims at the holy places really had remarked what covered the interior
walls of the churches in which they worshipped, we should have expected them
to have provided more detail in their descriptions.” Lately, art historians have
called into question the existence of loca sancta art at this relatively early period.
See, for example, Robert John Grigg, “Images on the Palestinian Flasks as Pos-
sible Evidence of the Monumental Decoration of Palestinian Martyria” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Minnesota, 1974), 117–23; and Gary Vikan, “Early Byzan-
tine Pilgrimage Devotionalia as Evidence of the Appearance of Pilgrimage
Shrines,” JAC Suppl. 20, 1:377–88.
event in the past, [and] enters into its drama.”14 Like the pilgrims who
are depicted standing beside the Magi on decorated flasks from the
Holy Land, Paula inserts herself among the eyewitnesses to the birth of
Christ. As Gary Vikan has shown for these sixth-century flasks, pilgrims
entered into the world of the Magi through the imitative gestures built
into the Jerusalem Liturgy.15 In Paula’s case, over a century earlier, the
eye of faith gives her access to this scene, closing any perceived gap
between the present and the past.
The type of realism Paula experienced begins to appear only in late-
fourth-century accounts. One narrative by an anonymous pilgrim from
Bordeaux, who journeyed to the Holy Land during the 330s, is steeped
in the past tense, indicating a detachment from biblical events.16 He
recalls Golgotha as the place “where the Lord was crucified”17 but gives
no indication of any personal experience of that event. Paula, visiting
the same place almost a half-century later, claimed actually to see Christ
crucified. A letter attributed to Paula, inviting the Roman aristocrat
Marcella to the Holy Land, achieves a similar vividness: “As often as we
enter [the Lord’s sepulchre] we see the Saviour in His grave clothes, and
if we linger we see again the angel sitting at His feet, and the napkin
folded at His head.”18 In closing the invitation, the writer anticipates
the sensory wonders of Marcella’s pilgrimage:
14. Ewert Cousins, “Francis of Assisi: Christian Mysticism at the Cross-

roads,” in Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983), 163–90, esp. 166–67.
15. Gary Vikan, “Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis on
Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert
Ousterhout (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 97–107.
16. See the interesting work of Laurie Douglass, “A New Look at the Itin-
erarium Burdigalense, “ JECS 4 (1996): 313–34.
17. It. Burg. 593 (Wilkinson, 158).
18. Jerome, Ep. 46.5. (ed. Labourt 2:105; Fremantle, 62): “quod quotiens-
cumque ingredimur, totiens iacere in sindone cernimus Saluatorem, et paulu-
lum ibidem commorantes rursum uidemus angelum sedere ad pedes eius, et ad
caput sudarium conuolutum.” On Jerome’s pilgrimages, see Pierre Maraval,
Then shall we touch with our lips the wood of the true cross. . . . We
shall see (videre) Lazarus come forth bound with grave clothes. . . .
We shall see (conspicere) the prophet Amos. . . . We shall see (videre)
the fountain in which the eunuch was immersed by Philip. . . . If
only you will come, we shall go to see (videbimus) Nazareth. . . . Not
far off Cana will be visible (cernetur) . . . we shall see (videbimus) the
spots where the five thousand were filled with five loaves. Our eyes
will look on Capernaum, the scene of so many of our Lord’s signs.19
Apart from mentioning the standard practice of kissing the wood of the
Cross, the journey is arranged as a series of visual events. One is
tempted to liken this verbal itinerary to a glossy brochure, but there is a
key difference: whereas tourists see the markers of the biblical events,
pilgrims “linger” to see the event itself.20
The power of that lingering vision to connect the viewer to biblical
events is prominent in another set of reminiscences of a Jerusalem pil-
grimage undertaken in the fourth century. This account, however, is
written by a non-pilgrim, Athanasius, who welcomes home a group of
female ascetics returning from their journey to the Holy Land. Known
today as the “Letter to Virgins Who Went and Prayed in Jerusalem and
Returned,”21 and joined to a treatise on virginity, the letter reimagines
the women’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land through a series of vignettes.
“Saint Jérôme et le pèlerinage aux lieux saints de Palestine,” in Jérôme entre

l’Occident et l’Orient (Actes du Colloque de Chantilly, 1986), ed. Yves-Marie Duval
(Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1988), 345–53.
19. Jerome, Ep. 46.13 (Labourt, 2:113–115; Fremantle, 65, slightly modi-
fied).
20. Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 153–67, esp. 159–60.
21. Hereafter cited as LVJer. The text survives only in a Syriac translation
from the sixth or seventh century, edited by J. Lebon, “Athanasiana Syriaca II,”
Le Muséon 41 (1928): 169–216. Eng. trans.: David Brakke, Appendix B, “Second
Letter to Virgins” in id., Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Claren-
don, 1995), 292–302. References are to Brakke’s paragraph divisions. On the
Part reminiscence, part consolation, Athanasius’s letter extends a

sympathetic welcome home to the virgins. Athanasius remarks on their
sense of loss after leaving Bethlehem, Golgotha, and the “holy moun-
tain,” probably the Mount of Olives.22 The place-names alone reveal
little about the experience of being a pilgrim. When he comes to Beth-
lehem, however, Athanasius provides more details: “You saw the cave of
the Lord, which is the image of Paradise.”23 “You have not journeyed far
from the holy places,” he consoles them, “for where Christ dwells, there
is holiness. And where Christ’s presence is, there too is an abundance of
the joys of holiness.”24 The virgins’ nostalgia, as Athanasius constructs
it, is not just for the places but also for the divine presence they per-
ceived there.25
More perplexing is the way Athanasius uses biblical allusions to fill
out these reminiscences: “Peter saw our Lord Jesus, abandoned his net,
and followed him. Zacchaeus the tax-collector saw him, rejected fraud-
ulent profits, and accepted the Savior. That evil-doing woman saw him
and wiped his feet with her tears and hair. Mary [the sister of Martha]
saw him and did not depart from before his feet.”26 There is nothing
odd in invoking biblical stories when discussing the land of the Bible.
What is strange about this passage is that Peter, Zacchaeus, and Mary
have no connection to the sites on the virgins’ itinerary. Normally, pil-
grims preferred to recall biblical stories that were read at the holy
debated authorship of this letter, see J. Roldanus, Le Christ et l’homme dans la

théologie d’Athanase (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 400–401; Brakke, Athanasius, 36–41;
and Susanna Elm, “Perceptions of Jerusalem Pilgrimage as Reflected in Two
Early Sources on Female Pilgrimage (Third and Fourth Centuries, A.D.),” SP
20 (1987): 219–23.
22. LVJer 1 (Brakke, 292).
25. An assumption that was often criticized; see Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 2.10.
On critics of pilgrimage, see Maraval, Lieux saints, 153–55.
places.27 Egeria, for example, noted the excitement she felt when she lis-
tened to the story of Israel’s wanderings as she stood in the Sinai
desert.28 Athanasius’s inclusions, however, suggest a new emphasis: the
pilgrims are reminded not that they stood where Mary, Peter, and Zac-
chaeus once stood, but that they saw what Jesus’ contemporaries saw. As
Athanasius puts it, “In the life-giving places you saw, so to speak, Christ
walking.”29 The immediacy of Christ’s presence is perceived by the fac-
ulty of sight. For Athanasius, at least, “being there” is less important
than “seeing there.”
Athanasius’s curious choice of exemplars has a subtle but forceful
effect on the reminiscences. By separating biblical places from the sto-
ries that are traditionally associated with them, he subtly shifts attention
away from sacred topography to visual piety. This move leaves him free
to invoke other biblical paradigms. When he recalls Bethlehem, he
makes no mention of the Magi, the archetypal pilgrims.30 Instead, the
virgins are to identify with Mary, the sister of Martha and model disci-
ple, who sat at Jesus’ feet (Luke 10:38–42); likewise, the virgins listened
obediently to the “exhortations” of the “holy ones” there.31 Whereas
Paula predictably encountered the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem, Athana-
sius puts there an entirely different Mary, not the mother of God but an
attentive disciple.
Although Athanasius does not evoke visionary experiences or a bibli-
cal realism comparable to Paula’s eye of faith, he nevertheless places
great emphasis on seeing: “You have seen the place of the Nativity: he
27. For an insightful discussion of this practice, see Jonathan Z. Smith, To

Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987),
89–90; and Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the
Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
44–46.
28. It. Eg. 3.6; cf. 4.3, 5.
30. Vikan, “Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing,” 103.
has given birth to your souls anew. You have seen the place of the cruci-
fixion: let the world be crucified to you and you to the world. You have
seen the place of the ascension: your minds are raised up.”32 Seeing
engenders change in the viewer. The repeated “you have seen” links
each act of seeing with a transformation. Modeled on Jesus’ compan-
ions, the virgins have changed as a result of seeing Christ. As Athanasius
constructs these correspondences, time cannot separate the pilgrims
from those who knew the “historical” Jesus precisely because the act of
seeing is what unites them. Although Athanasius does not suggest that
the virgins were participants or eyewitnesses to the actual events, theirs
is a visual piety unfettered by temporal distance. Whether one is speak-
ing of Zacchaeus or of the fourth-century virgins, visual perception trig-
gers an immediate bond with divine presence, a bond that is edifying
and permanently transforming.33
Although Athanasius’s consolation offers an alternative to holy
places, his message is not far removed from the sermons delivered in
Jerusalem. When preaching to Jerusalemites and pilgrims, Bishop Cyril
reminded them that they alone had the privilege of seeing Jesus.34 As
Cyril explained, the chance to see a holy place could affirm sacred mys-
teries more effectively than hearing, since “we know that sight is more
trustworthy than hearing.”35 When he introduced a group of newly
32. LVJer 6 (Brakke, 294). Everett Ferguson detects a similar seeing-

conversion pattern in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses: “Each of the experiences
of Moses in ‘seeing’ the divine is followed by an act of service” (“Progress in
Perfection: Gregory of Nyssa’s Vita Moysis, “ SP 14 [1976]: 307–14, esp. 312).
33. Given that the consolation is juxtaposed with a treatise praising female
virginity, the section on pilgrimage can be read as a polemic against physical pil-
grimage. The author attempts to show how the sense of divine presence can be
perpetuated away from holy places by means of the ascetic life. (Cf. Elm, “Per-
ceptions,” 220–21, 223).
34. On how this letter relates to fourth-century loca sancta debates, see
Georgia Frank, “Pilgrims’ Experience and Theological Challenge: Two Patris-
tic Views,” JAC Suppl. 20 2:787–91.
35. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Myst. 1.1 sa␾‹v ©pist_mhn Âyin Ökou±v poll›
baptized Christians to the sacraments, he demonstrated the importance

of sight by directing his audience to gaze on the holy places, since the
proof of his words was before their eyes.36 The resurrection is not an
illusion, Cyril insisted, for the simple reason that “the place itself, [is]
still visible,” as well as the church that adorns it.37 He affirmed the truth
and immediacy of the biblical past by calling on his audience to see for
themselves. As these fourth-century texts reveal, vision was capable of
conjuring, constituting, and responding to the presence of the divine.
Why did these bishops so readily single out vision as a bridge
between the pilgrim’s present and the sacred past? Changes in the polit-
ical and religious environment offer some explanations. As historians of
Christianity have pointed out, the legalization of Christianity fostered
among Christians a more positive valuation of the material world.38 In
this climate, the developing doctrine of the Incarnation took on a new
significance. According to several fourth-century theologians, the sanc-
tifying effect of God’s incarnation extended to the physical, material
world. Even Evagrius of Pontus, a proponent of imageless prayer, felt
that a full understanding of the “sensible and corporeal creation” was
indispensable to any contemplation of invisible realities; for, whoever
has “probed the visible creation in diligence and purity, knows what it
tells about the invisible creation.”39 In this broader understanding of the
pistote^ran e¡nai (FC 64:153). Cf. Cat. 13.22 and Cat. Myst. 5.21–22 (FC
64:203), which couple seeing with touch.
36. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 10.19, 13.4; Cat. Myst. 2.4 (FC 61:207–9; 64:6, 164).
37. fl tfipov aˆt„v ôti ␾ainfimenov. Cat. 4.10 (FC 1:124).
38. See for example, Wilken, The Land Called Holy, 90–91.
39. Evagrius of Pontus, Ep. ad Melaniam 3 (CPG 2438; trans. M. Parmen-
tier, “Evagrius of Pontus’ ‘Letter to Melania’ I,” Bijdragen, tijdschrift voor filosofie
en theologie 46 [1985]: 2–38, esp. 9–10, cf. 22). On Cyril of Jerusalem regarding
the Incarnation, see P. W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes
to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990),
37–38, 81–83.
Incarnation, God was revealed not only in Jesus and humanity but also
throughout creation. The words of the eighth-century theologian John
of Damascus (d. ca. 749) defending icons could well have been spoken in
the fourth century: “I boldly draw an image of the invisible God, not as
invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes by partaking of flesh
and blood.”40 What had once been inaudible would now be heard; what
had once been invisible could now be seen.
The Incarnation endows all sensory experience with a theological
significance, including pilgrims’ delight in remembering their experi-
ences at the holy places. God could be experienced in the sweeping arc
of burning incense or in the rich melody of a hymn.41 Even mystical
theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa or Augustine, whose distrust of
the physical senses led them to propose an alternative and higher order
of spiritual senses, still used sensory language to structure the language
of spiritual experience.42 But if the Incarnation, in theory, legitimated
all forms of sense perception as a means of knowing God, why did pil-
grims, in practice, favor vision over the other senses? What prompted
pilgrims to disparage the sense of hearing, as in the pilgrim who
reminded on holy man that “the ears are naturally (pe^␾uken) less reliable
40. Contra imaginum calumniatores orationes tres 1.4 (Anderson, 16).

41. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation,” JTS
n.s. 49 (1998): 109–28.
42. See Aimé Solignac, “Oculus,” DS 11:591–601, esp. 593–96; Mariette
Canévet, “Sens spirituel,” DS 14:598–617; Robert J. Hauck, “‘They Saw What
They Said They Saw’: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian Perspective,” HTR
81 (1988): 239–49; Margaret R. Miles, “Vision: The Eye of the Body and the
Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions,” Journal of
Religion 63 (1983): 125–42; Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique: Essai
sur la doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 222–52.
On the background and legacy of this idea, see K. Rahner, “Le début d’une doc-
trine des cinq sens spirituels chez Origène,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 13
(1932): 113–45. B. Fraigneau-Julien, Les sens spirituels et la vision de Dieu selon
Syméon le Nouveau Théologien (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985).
than the eyes”?43 The cultural assumptions behind this preference for
vision and distrust of hearing are worth investigating.
VISION IN LATE ANTIQUE THEOLOGY
The cultural privileging of vision ran deeper than any incarnational the-
ology that valorized all the senses. Ironically, the problem of blindness
allows us to understand why pilgrims cherished visual experience. Of all
the healing miracles reported in the gospels, the story of the man born
blind ( John 9:1–41) was particularly perplexing to preachers. Jesus heals
the blind man, who goes on to expose the arrogance and ignorance of
the Pharisees. In many respects, this story follows the symbolic inver-
sions of light and dark, seeing and blindness, that are so prominent in
Johannine literature.44 The irony of the situation was unmistakable. As
John Chrysostom summed it up: “A blind man was teaching those with
sight how to see,”45 a reversal that lent itself well to condemnations of
spiritual blindness in all its forms.46
More disturbing was the fact of real blindness. Perhaps it was part of
the human condition to become blind, but the idea that God would cre-
43. HM 1.19 (Russell, 54–55).

44. Esp. Jn 1:5; 9:1–41; 12:40; 1 Jn 2:11. See Judith M. Lieu, “Blindness in
the Johannine Tradition,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 83–95.
45. John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili 10.34 (FC 72:257).
46. Unbelief: Jn 9:39–41; Mt 15:14; cf. Isa 6:9–10, quoted in Mt 13:10–15;
Mk 4:12; Lk 8:10; Jn 12:39–41; Acts 9:1–19a (cf. Ephrem’s commentary on
Saul’s “infamous mark of blindness,” Sermo de Domino nostro 30.4 [FC
91:308–9]); Acts 28:26–27. Heresy: John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili 2.54
(FC 72:93); Augustine, Ep. 185.22; cf. blinding diseases as a metaphor for unbe-
lief in Augustine, Sermon Mayence 61/Dolbeau 25.14 (ed. F. Dolbeau, Vingt-six
sermons au peuple d’Afrique [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996]: 257), I thank
Michael Gaddis and Peter Brown, respectively, for these two references.
Immorality: John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 22; 57.3; Gregory of Nyssa, De vir-
ginitate 10–11. See also Jean Daniélou, L’être et le temps chez Grégoire de Nysse
(Leiden: Brill, 1970), 133–53 (chapter 7, “Aveuglement”), esp. 151.
ate a blind person was particularly distressing to Christian preachers. To

the fourth-century bishop Asterius of Amasea, such neglect on the part
of the Creator was almost inconceivable: “Among the created things . . .
the eye is worthy of wonder. For when perceiving the entire creation
accurately, and from this activity perceiving the crafter, it explains even
God to me. Thus from visible things it explains the invisible things to
the soul. . . . For if the eye did not exist, the creation would grow old
unwitnessed (Öm_rturov), since no one would observe (kaqor‹ntov) the
wisdom and power of God.”47 Underlying this praise of the eye is a
painful question: if the healthy eye is both teacher to the soul and link to
the Creator, why would God deprive his creatures of the very instru-
ment by which he can be known? Isn’t God forgetting himself by for-
getting the eye? To Asterius, blindness posed not just an aesthetic or
practical problem but also a theological one with grave implications
both for the Creator and the creature.
Asterius’s vocabulary for blindness is taken from theologians’ praise of
the healthy eye. He echoes the author of the De structura hominis (a work
falsely attributed to Basil of Caesarea), whose entire understanding of
sight and blindness rested on the conviction that all humans “were born
to see God.”48 Thus, God equipped us with two eyes, not only to sharpen
perception but also to ensure uninterrupted vision of God should one eye
become damaged. No doubt this author was aware that many body parts
come in pairs; but only the eyes were regarded as having a backup system
in place. Several writers, including Gregory of Nyssa, called attention to
the position of the eyes: the fact that they are situated higher than any
other sense organ is ample proof that they are closest to God.49 Thus, by
divinizing the eye, Asterius managed to diminish the horror of blindness.
47. Asterius of Amasea, Hom. 7.5.

48. Pseudo-Basil, De structura hominis 2.15.
49. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 8.1. Cf. John Chrysostom, In Ioh.
hom. 56 (FC 41:91); Augustine, De Trinitate 11.1.1. See also Canévet, “Oculus,”
DS 11:593.
John Chrysostom also devoted considerable attention to the man

born blind. In both the Homilies on John and On the Incomprehensibility
of God he praised the eye: it was, as he put it, “a small organ in size, but
. . . more important than all the rest of the body.”50 According to John,
its importance rested on the fact that it is “the light not merely of the
body, but also of the soul more than of the body.”51 Chrysostom fol-
lows Asterius when he points out that the eye is essential to all life: “If
you should extinguish the sun, you would destroy everything and cre-
ate chaos; if you should extinguish the light of the eyes, the feet would
also be useless, and the hands and even life.”52 Thus Chrysostom too
concludes that only by the eyes does the creature know God. “If the
eyes have been disabled,” Chrysostom claims, “wisdom also departs,
because by them we know God.”53 Neither writer could have enter-
tained the notion of a “blind seer”; wisdom and vision were too closely
tied.
For all his praise of the eye and sight, Chrysostom stands out for his
efforts to fit blindness into the divine plan. To him the eye was as reve-
latory as it was capable of perceiving revelation: “The heavens may be
silent, but the sight of them emits a voice, that is louder than a trumpet’s
sound; instructing us not by the ear, but through the medium of the
eyes; for the latter is a sense which is more sure and more distinct than
the former.”54 Not only are the eyes most receptive to this revelation,
but the revelation itself chooses the visual medium precisely for its uni-
versality. As the preacher goes on to explain, “Of the things that are
50. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 56 (FC 41:90).

51. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 56 (FC 41:90); cf. Mir. Thec. 24.10–19.
Tales such as these prompt the editor, Gilbert Dagron, to dub the Miracles of
Saint Thecla “une littérature des yeux grands ouverts” (SH 62:138).
52. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 56 (FC 41:90); cf. Plato, Republic 508b.
54. John Chrysostom, De stat. 9.4 (NPNF 1.9.401); cf. De stat. 11.6 (NPNF
1.9.415).
seen, there is one uniform perception; and there is no difference, as is

the case with respect to languages.”55 As Chrysostom understands
vision, it is not only preferred but essential to any knowledge of God.
To give this priority to vision renders the problem of blindness even
more distressing, prompting Chrysostom to insist that God has no
intention of blinding sighted people.56 To reconcile these conflicting
claims about God, Chrysostom reminds his audience that the man born
blind suffers only a temporary affliction. By this reasoning, God is to be
understood as a “first-class sculptor” who “leaves out a part [of a statue]
so that, by the omission, he may prove his skill and ability to make the
statue whole.”57 This is not the first time Chrysostom has invoked an
argument for a deliberate manufacturing defect. In a sermon on the
Gospel story of Jesus healing the man born blind, he likens God to an
architect who, as he puts it, “may complete part of the house and leave
a part unfinished, so as to prove to the skeptical that the whole building
is his work, when he supplies what is has been left incomplete.”58 By
this reasoning, blindness—and not the eye—has become the proof of
divine craftsmanship. All claims to the divine origins of the eye become
undermined by the notion of temporary blindness. Thus, Chrysostom
exclaims, “O blessed blindness!” so long as it is strictly temporary.59
Unable to fathom long-term blindness, Chrysostom avoids any embar-
rassment to God. Blindness is transformed into a matter of unfinished
business; the restoration of vision is God’s way of signing off on a job
well done, nothing less than a coda to creation. Troubled by a God who
would inflict blindness, John Chrysostom and Asterius each found a dif-
ferent way to ascribe divine purpose to it. Asterius drew from the lan-
55. John Chrysostom, De stat. 9.5 (NPNF 1.9.401–2).

57. John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili 10.32 (FC 72:256)
58. John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 56 (FC 41:89); cf. Jn 9:1–41.
59. John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili 10.35 (FC 72:257).
guage of the healthy eye, and Chrysostom turned the affliction into a
temporary ailment.
SEEING AND TOUCHING THE HOLY PLACES
In a theological environment that privileged sight, pilgrims discovered

the further powers of vision at holy places. Seeing the holy places threw
open the weighted curtains of the sacred past and so of the scriptures.
More difficult to understand in this theological context is why pilgrims
also desired to link themselves to holy places by touch. How does one
reconcile John Chrysostom’s notion of God’s exclusively visible revela-
tion with pilgrims’ tendency to touch holy places?
The desire to touch the holy manifests itself wherever pilgrims
gather dirt, rub statues, or run their fingers along the words of an
inscription.60 In the fourth century Cyril of Jerusalem boasted to cate-
chumens that “others merely hear, but we see and touch.”61 From as far
away as Italy, Paulinus, bishop of Nola, echoed this sentiment: “No
other sentiment draws men to Jerusalem but the desire to see and touch
the places where Christ was physically present. . . . So if the desire is a
truly religious one to see the places in which Christ walked, suffered,
rose again, and ascended into heaven . . . there is a blessing in taking and
keeping a pinch of dust from these places or a mere mote from the wood
of the cross.”62 For Paulinus, at least, the fulfillment of that “desire . . .
to see” comes only in the act of touching. The conjunction of sight and
touch is even more puzzling when one recalls all the pilgrims who noted
memorable experiences of seeing and hearing biblical stories at the holy
places63 yet never cited hearing as a privilege of pilgrimage. To under-
stand why pilgrims began giving special attention to what they touched,
60. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 114.

61. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 13.22 (FC 64:19).
62. Ep. 49.14 (Walsh, 2:273).
63. For example, It. Eg. 3.6; cf. 4.3, 5.
it is worth recalling how much the pilgrimage sites changed over the
course of the century that followed Constantine and Helena’s promo-
tion of the Holy Land.
The rapid increase in the display and transfer of relics was one factor
that contributed to pilgrims’ desire to touch the holy. In a letter that
accompanied the transfer of a relic of the Cross, Paulinus of Nola
described the sand surrounding the place of Jesus’ ascension: not only is
it “visible,” he said, but it is also “accessible to worshippers,” a qualifica-
tion not found in earlier pilgrim reports.64 The Holy Land, as it were,
was up for grabs. And grab the pilgrims did. When they processed
before the True Cross, as Egeria describes the scene, they first touched
the relic with their foreheads and eyes, then kissed it.65
By the sixth century, the architectural, monastic, and liturgical set-
tings for pilgrims had changed considerably. One gets a sense of those
changes from the crudely executed images on souvenirs pilgrims
brought home as well as from the Jerusalem skyline depicted on the apse
mosaic at Santa Pudenziana in Rome.66 Even where artifacts from that
time are missing, the anonymous diary of a pilgrim from Piacenza in
Italy reminds us of how cluttered the holy places had become by the
mid-sixth century. This pilgrim describes handling the flagon and the
bread basket that were with Mary at the Annunciation, the book and
bench that Christ used in his synagogue at Nazareth, the bucket “from
which the Lord drank” at the well of the Samaritan woman, and the
64. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 31.4 (Walsh, 2:129–30). This description of

Helena’s building activities also indicates the presence of sacred substances asso-
ciated with holy places. On the accessibility of sacred substances, see Hunt, Holy
Land Pilgrimage, 128–54.
65. It. Eg. 37.3. After one pilgrim bit off a piece of the True Cross, kissing
continued, but under the close supervision of church personnel. On the pattern
of forehead, eyes, and mouth, cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Myst. 5.21. On the kiss
compared to other tactile gestures, see Pierre Adnès, “Toucher, Touches,” DS
15:1075.
66. Wilken, Land Called Holy, 177.
sponge and reed from the Crucifixion.67 All these items—and more—
were within his reach. He describes how he touched, carried, and
reclined on various relics, displaying a hands-on piety unmatched by
earlier pilgrims’ reports.
These “vessels of divine power,”68 as John of Damascus would later
refer to relics, proliferated at a rate that alarmed some bishops in other
lands but delighted pilgrims.69 Indeed, the Piacenza pilgrim could be
considered a poster child for what some historians herald as a “new tac-
tile piety.”70 On rare occasions the Piacenza pilgrim managed to resist
the impulse to touch; for instance, he and other pilgrims “venerated”
the head of John the Baptist by simply looking at it “with our own
eyes.”71 Since the head is kept “in a glass vase” (in doleo vitreo), one
begins to suspect that without that physical barrier, he would also have
touched the head. In contrast to Paula’s reliance on visualization, more
senses came into play as pilgrims responded to the new abundance of
relics. With the Piacenza pilgrim’s fingerprints all over the Holy Land,
one is tempted to doubt that vision could ever again have the effect it
had during the fourth century. In this context, a new tactile piety offered
the devotee genuine and immediate access to these concrete manifesta-
tions of sanctity.
67. Ps.-Antonini Placentini Itinerarium, 22 (Wilkinson, 83–84).

68. C. imag. 3.34 (Anderson, 85–86).
69. R. A. Markus, “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of
the Christian Idea of Holy Places,” JECS 2 (1994): 257–71. On efforts to con-
trol pilgrims’ sensory access to the holy places and the emotional effects of those
changes, see Hahn, “Seeing and Believing,” 1086–92, 1100–1.
70. See, for example, Maraval, Lieux saints, 144–45 and id., “Égérie et Gré-
goire de Nysse, pèlerins aux lieux saints de Palestine,” in Atti del convegno inter-
nazionale sulla Peregrinatio Egeriae (Arezzo: Accademia Petrarca di lettere arti
e scienze, 1987), 315–31, esp. 330–31. Wilken’s discussion of the “new tactile
piety” appears in Land Called Holy, 115.
71. Ps.-Antonini Placentini Itinerarium, 46 (Wilkinson, 89); cf. 44 (Wilkin-
son, 88).
One is tempted to conclude that touch replaced sight.72 If there was

a shift in sensory priorities, however, it was a relatively rapid one. Not
too long before, in Athanasius’s Life of Anthony, for instance, touch was
discredited as the sensory mode used by pagans and demons.73 More
problematic still is the assumption that vision is somehow incompatible
with the “localization of the holy,” an apt term for, among other things,
the increasing materiality inherent in late antique notions of sanctity.74
To frame the problem in terms of the replacement of sight or an
increasing dissatisfaction with sight leads to greater misunderstandings.
These questions are entirely appropriate to our own culture. Inundated
as we are by cyberspace, spectator sports, television, and virtual reality,
sight can seem impotent compared to touch. The very idea of “hands-
on” experience implies that visual experience is somehow less genuine
and more passive epistemologically.75 Such oppositions, however, are
not helpful in exploring how ancients understood the relation between
sight and touch.
Recent cross-cultural studies of sense experience are helpful. As Con-
stance Classen and David Howes have argued, a culture may ascribe dif-
72. For example, Maraval, Lieux saints, 144: “Or cette vénération implique
un contact physique, où le toucher accompagne le voir et finit par devenir plus
important que lui.”
73. V. Ant. 40; 70 cf. 63.
74. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1981), 86–88.
75. To be sure, the ancients also used tactile metaphors for intellection: see
Philostratus, V. Apoll. 2.5 (LCL 1:129), an exhortation for the pure soul to see
clearly (dior_w), in order to touch ({ptw) the virtues and thereby soar to con-
templative heights. See also Plotinus, Enn. 1.6.4, 6.9.4, 7–8, 11; cf. J. H. Slee-
man and Gilbert Pollet, Lexicon Plotinianum (Brill: Leiden, 1980), esp. s.v.
“{ptesqai,” “jfú,” “sun_ptein” (cols. 136, 178, 965–66); cf. Adnès, “Toucher,”
1073–98, and David Katz’s instructive sampling of tactile expressions for intel-
lection (The World of Touch, trans. Lester E. Krueger [Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1989], 238–39).
ferent emphases and meanings to individual senses and even privilege the
knowledge gained from one particular sense. Some cultures, for instance,
may place greater meaning and emphasis on knowledge derived from
smell than on sight or hearing. It is up to the cultural interpreter to dis-
cern “how the patterning of sense experience varies from one culture to
the next”76 by examining a given culture’s myths, rituals, language, and
social organization.77 For late antique pilgrims, then, a survey of the
larger culture can yield a better understanding of the relative quality of
perceptions afforded by touch and sight.
While the emergence of a new tactile piety is certainly conceivable, it
would have been a countercultural piety, one at odds with Greco-
Roman and Christian attitudes toward vision, as the ancients under-
stood its anatomical and therefore theological superiority. A Christian
valorization of touch is certainly possible, given the example of Jesus,
who healed many by touch.78 Once again, however, it is important to
consider what qualities of perception the ancients assigned to touch.
Ancient discussions often ranked the senses from the most sophis-
ticated to the most vulgar. Typically, sight and touch were assigned to
opposite ends of the hierarchy.79 For Aristotle, touch was necessary
for survival but hardly a noble sense.80 A passage from the Hellenistic
76. David Howes, “Introduction: ‘To Summon All the Senses,’” in Howes,
ed., Varieties of Sensory Experience, 3–21, esp. 3. Another useful collection of
essays in this field is Constance Classen’s Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in
History and across Cultures (New York: Routledge, 1993); see also Classen,
“Sweet Colors, Fragrant Songs: Sensory Models of the Andes and the Ama-
zon,” American Ethnologist 17 (1990): 722–34, esp. 722.
77. Howes and Classen outline an approach in “Conclusion: Sounding Sen-
sory Profiles,” in Howes, ed., Varieties of Sensory Experience, 257–88.
78. For example, Mt 8:3; 9:20–22; 14:36; Mk 1:41; 3:10; 5:27–30; 6:56;
7:33; cf. Jn 7:24, 27; 20:17; 1 Jn 1:1.
79. For example, Aristotle, De anima, discusses sight (II.7), hearing (II.8),
smell (II.9), taste (II.10), and, finally, touch (II.11). This order is also preserved
in another work attributed to Aristotle, Problemata, 31–35.
80. Despite being the first sense mentioned in Aristotle’s De anima (II.2 [414a3];
II.3 [415a3–5]), touch still figures last in his systematic discussion of the senses
Jewish philosopher Philo amplifies the polarity between sight and

touch:
Now of the five [senses], the three most animal and servile are taste,
smell, and touch. . . . The other two have a link with philosophy and
hold the leading place—hearing and sight. But the ears are in a way
more sluggish and womanish than the eyes. The eyes have the
courage to reach out to the visible objects and do not wait to be
acted on by them, but anticipate the meeting, and seek to act upon
them instead. . . . [S]pecial precedence must be given to sight, for
God made it the queen of the other senses and set it above them all,
and . . . has associated it most closely with the soul.81
In Philo’s understanding of the sensorium, sight is superior to all the

other senses, so much so that its nimble acuity can be compared only to
hearing. Touch, that “animal and servile” sense, does not even merit
comparison. And yet, the fact that Philo ascribes vision’s “courage” to its
haptic powers, permitting it to “reach out to the visible objects,” is a
choice of metaphor worth exploring.
Philo’s choice is hardly idiosyncratic. Ancient philosophers often
described vision as a series of contacts. In the Timaeus, Plato explained
that in the act of seeing, a fire within the eye flows outward to create a
visual ray of such force that it “collides” with its object.82 One Christian
(cf. II.11 [422b17]; III.13 [435a13–14]). See also Cynthia Freeland, “Aristotle
on the Sense of Touch,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nuss-
baum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 227–48. Trans-
lations are available in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Trans-
lation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984).
81. De Abr. §§ 149–50 (LCL 6:147–48). See David Chidester’s commentary
on Philo’s treatment of vision in Word and Light, 30–43.
82. Timaeus 45c (LCL 7:102). Cf. Empedocles, Fr. 84 ⫽ Aristotle, De sensu,
437b23; cf. 438a26f.; Plato, Tim. 46b (LCL 7:104), where Plato borrows lan-
guage associated with the sense of touch (òpa␾ú). For a helpful overview of
summary of this Platonized theory characterized the eyes as having

tentacle-like rays, which “lay hold with their ends upon external bodies,
as though grasping them with hands.”83 Or, as Gregory of Nyssa
adapted the concept of the tactile gaze, “Who can help but love such a
[divine] beauty provided that he has an eye capable of reaching out to its
loveliness?”84
Even philosophers who rejected the notion of a ray flowing from the
eye retained the idea of vision occurring through contacts, only in the
opposite direction. Aristotle claimed that vision produces a movement
in the eye that leaves an impression as if stamped in wax.85 Zeno the
Stoic, in contrast, spoke of stressed air that stretches out from the eye to
object of vision “as if by a stick.”86 And the Epicureans, who described
vision as images flowing off objects, still spoke of those images striking
(òmp¥ptein) the eye.87
ancient optics, see David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 1–17; David E. Hahm, “Early
Hellenistic Theories of Vision and the Perception of Color,” in Studies in Per-
ception: Interrelations in the History of Philosophy and Science, ed. Peter K.
Machamer and Robert G. Turnbull (Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
1978), 60–95; D. W. Hamlyn, Sensation and Perception: A History of the Philosophy
of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), esp. 1–42. Still useful
is John I. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition: From Alcmaeon to Aristo-
tle (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), esp. 86–92.
83. Taken from Hipparchus of Nicaea (fl. 146–126 B.C.E.), On the Opinions
of the Philosophers, 4.13; quoted in the Christian theologian and doxographer
Nemesius (fl. ca. 390), De nat. hom. 28 (trans. in Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius
of Emesa, ed. William Telfer [Library of Christian Classics, 4; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1955], 324–25).
84. In Cant. 1 ( Jaeger, 38; McCambley, 53–54).
85. Aristotle, De anima 435a9.
86. As reported in Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum 7.157
(LCL, 2:261).
87. Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentary on Aristotle’s De sensu 438a5ff;
text: H. Usener, ed., Epicurea (Leipzig: Teubner, 1887) §319; ⫽ “Text 98,” in
Two observations are in order here: first, all three theories remained
current into the late antique period. Aulus Gellius was typical of other
intellectuals from the second century when he cursorily summarized
several theories, instead of attempting to fully discredit any.88 Christian
summaries of optics likewise implied that several theories were, to vary-
ing degrees, viable.89 This leads to the second observation: that several
theories making competing—sometimes conflicting—claims remained
plausible over many centuries. It is significant, I think, that the most
enduring theories were those that incorporated notions of contact, pen-
etration, and even collision.90 The idea of continuous contact between
the viewer and the object explains a great deal about why vision was con-
sidered to ensure unmediated knowledge.
Ancient conceptions of memory most forcefully illustrate this combi-
nation of seeing and touching. In a treatise devoted to the nature and
function of memory, Aristotle defined a discrete memory as the
“imprint” a sense-affection leaves on the soul, “as a seal-ring acts in
stamping.”91 Aristotle’s conception of memory remains closely tied to
the sense of sight. By treating each memory as a “picture” (zwgr_␾hma)
of the real thing, Aristotle implies that each sensation, on entering the
mind, assumes a visual form. So the taste of honey, the smell of incense,
The Epicurus Reader, ed. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1994), 94.
88. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.16.3 (LCL 1:430–31); Plutarch, Quaest.
conviv. 1.8.625–26 (LCL 8:82–87).
89. The three theories also appear in Christian doxographies of the fourth
century, including Nemesius of Emesa, De nat. hom. 7.28 (ed. F. Matthaei,
178.3–182.3; trans. Telfer, 324–26).
90. For example, Lucretius, De rer. nat. 4.220–269 (LCL 295–97).
91. kaq_per o∂ sfragizfimenoi to¬v daktul¥oiv (De mem. 450a34; ed. Ross,
104–5). This common haptic metaphor allowed Plato to account for strong and
weak memories. Thus in the Theaetetus (191c–d), Socrates explains that if the
“wax” of one’s memory is too soft or too hard, or even too dirty, whatever impres-
sions it captures will be distorted; cf. Aristotle, De mem. 450 b (Ross, 105.10–12).
and the melody from a hymn, to take a few examples, would be trans-
lated into mental pictures and then stored in the memory.
In later centuries, Cicero and other Romans continued to marvel at
the image-making power of memory, a faculty Pliny deemed “the boon
most necessary for life.”92 More specifically, it was a sine qua non of ora-
tory, as Cicero explained: “A memory for things is the special property
of the orator—this we can imprint on our minds by a skilful arrange-
ment of the several masks (personis) that represent them, so that we may
grasp ideas by means of images and their order by means of localities.”93
By referring to these mental pictures as “masks,” Cicero reinforced the
close relation between the tactile process of imprinting and its imagistic
result. Recollection is understood as a visual process by which the
mind’s eye scans and retrieves specific visual images.94 As with super-
market produce stretch-sealed on styrofoam trays, vision ensured that
each memory was neatly processed, packaged, and stored for easier han-
dling.
To some extent the proper placement of memory-images was vital to
their successful retrieval; hence the spatial metaphors of writing tablets,
treasuries, and palaces.95 More important than order, however, was the
92. Pliny, Nat. hist. 7.24.88 (LCL 2:563): “memoria necessarium maxime
vitae bonum.” On the arts of memory, see the landmark study by Francis Yates,
The Art of Memory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), esp. 17–62; and
Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp. 1–45. A more descriptive
survey appears in Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the
Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
93. Cicero, De orat. 2.86.351–2.87.360 (LCL 1:465–73); cf. Quintilian’s
more detailed description of techniques for cultivating memory, Inst.
orat. 11.2.1–51, esp. 17–22.
94. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 11.2.32.
95. On the importance of an “abode” or locus, see Cicero, De orat. 2.87.358;
on types of backgrounds, see Rhet. ad Her. 3.17.30–3.19.32. More specifically,
ancients compared memory to a tabula: for example, Cicero, De part. orat. 26;
thesaurus: Quintilian, Inst. orat. 11.2.1, 21–22 (LCL 4:213, 223); cf. Augustine,
sense of sight. All storage and organization of memories depended on

assumption of a visual form. If properly stored, memory could avoid
being “crushed beneath a weight of images,” a meltdown of sorts that
Cicero refused to contemplate.96 The most effective “backgrounds,”
advised the author of the rhetorical treatise Ad Herennium, were those
that were properly spaced so as to permit accurate inspection.97 As
Cicero explained this priority of vision: “The most complete pictures
are formed in our minds of the things that have been conveyed to them
and imprinted on them by the senses, but that the keenest of all our
senses is the sense of sight, and that consequently perceptions received
by the ears . . . can be most easily retained in the mind if they are also
conveyed to our minds by the mediation of the eyes.”98 By this scheme,
the eyes must intervene for the memory to retain all sense impressions.
This was the lesson Cicero drew from the story he relates about the poet
Simonides, who had stepped out of a banquet hall just moments before
the roof collapsed, killing all the diners. The destruction was so great
that friends and family were unable to identify the bodies of the dead.
Simonides, however, identified each body by remembering where
everyone had been reclining, a feat facilitated by the careful arrange-
ment of visual memories by places.99 Indeed, the “best aid to clearness
of memory consists in orderly arrangement,”100 but his reconstruction
depended primarily on his eye for detail.
Of course the ancients knew that it was possible to remember a song
or a smell. Yet even in their imagistic forms, sense impressions derived
from smell, taste, touch, or hearing were believed to be more fragile.
Conf. 10.8. Carruthers offers a rich analysis of these locational and architectural
metaphors in Book of Memory, 16–45, esp. 21–22, and Craft of Thought, 7–24.
96. Cicero, De orat. 2.88.360 (LCL 1:471).
97. Rhet. ad Her. 3.19.32 (LCL [Cicero] 1:213); on the dangers that arise
from crowding mental images, see Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 82, 99.
98. Cicero, De orat. 2.87.357 (LCL 1:469).
99. The story of this father of memory appears in De orat. 2.86.352–54.
100. Ibid., 2.86.353 (LCL 1:467).
Even after they assumed a pictorial form, Cicero claimed, they remained
incomplete images. As he remarked, “Things not seen and not lying in the
field of visual discernment are earmarked by a sort of outline and image
and shape so that we keep hold of as it were by an act of sight things that
we can scarcely embrace by an act of thought.”101 He implies that only
the memories of things seen retain their full substance and appearance,
whereas memories of things heard, and, by extension, anything smelled,
tasted, or touched, are only partially remembered, in a sketchy outline
and undifferentiated shape. If memory is the “firm mental grasp of mat-
ter and words,” as Cicero defined memory elsewhere,102 the firmest
grasp was reserved for things seen.
The orators relied on memory for their livelihood; hence their inter-
est in mnemonic techniques. But biographers of holy men offer deeper
insights into the meaning of memory. For instance, Philostratus, in
describing Apollonius of Tyana’s period of self-imposed silence, remarks
on the importance of memory for this period: “[He] kept absolute
silence, though his eyes and his mind were taking note of many a thing,
and though most things were being stored in his memory.”103 In later
years, the hymn he would sing to Memory—sung entirely from mem-
ory, Philostratus adds—credited Memory with keeping time itself
immortal, even as time erodes and wears away all else.104 That perma-
nence and divinity of memory says as much about vision, the premier
sense that stilled the passage of time.
This preference for visual memory is sustained in Christian pilgrims’
writings. In the History of the Monks, the narrator recalls justifying his
visit to John of Lycopolis: “We have come to you . . . for the good of our
souls, so that what we have heard with our ears we might perceive with
101. Ibid., 2.87.357 (LCL 1:468–69).

102. Cicero, De inv. 1.7.9 (LCL 2:20–21): “memoria est firma animi rerum
ac verborum perceptio.”
103. Philostratus, V. Apoll. 1.14 (LCL 1:37).
104. Ibid.
our eyes—for the ears are naturally less reliable than the eyes—and
because very often forgetfulness follows what we hear, whereas the mem-
ory of what we have seen is not easily erased but remains imprinted
(òntetÏpwtai) on our minds like a picture (∂stor¥a).”105 The echoes from
Cicero are striking here, including the visual framework of memory, con-
noted by the imagistic ∂stor¥a, the tenuous nature of aural memory, and
the haptic metaphor of imprinted, hence, permanent memory. Although
this pilgrim claims no formal mnemonic system or framework, as Quin-
tilian did for orators,106 he appeals to inherent properties of vision and
touch to make his case. With the memory of the eyes nothing is “lost in
translation.”
One detects an even more concrete persistence of haptic language in
discussions of the evil eye.107 In a dinner discussion about whether and
how a glaring eye can injure another person, Plutarch recalls how
“everybody [but the host] pronounced the matter completely silly and
scoffed at it.”108 But it was a nervous derision that ran throughout the
conversation, as several participants offered up tales of the erotic and
exotic eye, reporting cases of healing amulets, jaundice cured by looking
at the yellow-feathered charadrios, and an entire people known for their
lethal gaze. Some reported cases of “self-bewitchment,” a boomerang
affliction brought on when an evil eye catches its own reflection.109 As
105. HM 1.19. Cf.: “If we want to convince someone, we say ‘I have seen
with my own eyes,’ not, ‘I know by hearsay.’ ” John Chrysostom, In Ioh. hom. 26
(FC 33:257). On this topos in ancient historiography, see John Marincola,
Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997), 63–69.
106. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 11.2.1–51, esp. 11 (ars memoriae), 32–34 (on role
of the eye in memorization). On the relation between Ciceronian arts of mem-
ory and monastic ones, see Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 81–82.
107. Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. 5.7.680c–683b (LCL 8:417–33).
108. Ibid., 5.7.680c (LCL 8:417).
109. Ibid., 5.7.680e (Thibeans); 681c–d (jaundice); 681f (amulets); 682e
(self-bewitchment). To this list one might add Pliny’s claim (Nat. hist. 7.18) that
all women with double pupils have an injurious glance.
one speaker conceded, “it is not paradoxical or incredible” that the

glance from the envious is like a “poisoned arrow.”110 Closer to para-
doxography than sustained investigation, the conversation closed with a
series of explanations invoking authorities such as Hippocrates and the
atomist philosopher Democritus. Despite these mental gymnastics,
however, no single explanation apparently proved satisfactory. More
significant for our purposes, no symposiast managed to “explain away”
the evil eye by some appeal to an inherent contradiction between sight,
to us an essentially (and not just apparently) immaterial phenomenon,
and injury, a material chain of events.111 Immateriality was simply not
an option. Like the thin stream of smoke that rises from an extinguished
candle, the materiality of sight curled in the air as the conversation drew
to a close. Thus, Plutarch’s parting assurances, “Don’t think that I want
to make your flesh creep and throw you into panic late at night,” must
have had a hollow ring.112
More than any ancient treatise on optics, conversations such as
Plutarch’s allow us to understand the properties of vision that induced
fear, bewilderment, and sometimes even wonder. Even when the phe-
nomenon of the evil eye defied logical explanation, it retained a force in
the ancient imagination.113 It resurfaced in Christian discussions in
110. Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. 5.7.681f (LCL 8: 424–27).

111. H. J. Blumenthal makes the interesting point that Aristotle’s notion of
sense data as tupoi, or, impressions, on the soul (citing De anima 68,5, 10–11)
remained unquestioned by his Hellenistic commentators. In the late antique
period, however, Philoponus (ca. 490–ca. 570) and, to a lesser extent, Plotinus
before him introduced a markedly antimaterialist reading of the De anima (Aris-
totle and Neo-Platonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the De Anima [Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996], 123, 134–35). Cf. Aristotle, De mem. 450a;
Plotinus on the non-haptic nature of vision (4.4.2; 4.5.2, 4).
112. Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. 5.7.683a (LCL 8:433).
113. On the persistence of extramissionist notions of vision, see Dale C.
Allison, “The Eye is the Lamp of the Body (Matthew 6.22–23⫽Luke
11.34–36),” New Testament Studies 33 (1987): 61–83, esp. 63–65; Hans Dieter
Betz, “Matthew vi.22f and Ancient Greek Theories of Vision,” in Text and Inter-
which the evil eye was believed to cast injurious rays.114 One commen-
tator was the fourth-century bishop Basil of Caesarea, who discredited
many beliefs surrounding the evil eye but still described how the eye can
hurl lethal arrows.115 As these examples suggest, average Christians
would not have concerned themselves directly with debates over optical
theories, but they readily used haptic metaphors to describe vision.
They retained the assumption that seeing involved something reaching
out and touching its object.
Perhaps the immediacy and contact associated with seeing can
explain why Christians could simultaneously praise and fear the power
of the gaze. As the window or mirror of the soul, the eye could lead the
soul to God, but it could also swiftly distract it from divine purposes.116
Some ascetics immured themselves to protect others from the danger-
ous consequences of the erotic gaze.117 Most dangerous was vision’s
power to connect the viewer so intimately to its object that the adhesion
could damage the soul beyond repair. As a Coptic preacher warned his
flock, “What the eye sees it appropriates.”118
pretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black, ed. Ernest Best
and R. M. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 43–56.
114. On the evil eye in the patristic period, see Vasiliki Limberis, “The Eyes
Infected by Evil: Basil of Caesarea’s Homily, On Envy, “ HTR 84 (1991): 163–84;
Matthew Dickie, “The Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye,” in Byzantine
Magic, ed. Henry Maguire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 9–34;
Blake Leyerle, “John Chrysostom on the Gaze,” JECS 1 (1993): 159–74, esp.
165. For cross-cultural perspectives, see Clarence Maloney, ed., The Evil Eye
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1976); Alan Dundes, ed., The Evil Eye:
A Casebook (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).
115. See Limberis, “Eyes Infected by Evil,” 165.
116. For example, Jerome, Ep. 54.3. On the seduction of the eyes, see
Theodoret, De providentia 9.25, trans. in Thomas Halton, Theodoret of Cyrus, On
Divine Providence (ACW 49; Mahwah, N.J.: Newman, 1988). See also Leyerle,
“John Chrysostom on the Gaze,” 165–69.
117. HL 5.
118. Pseudo-Shenoute, On Christian Behaviour 40.7 (Kuhn, 30:55).
Christians cultivated a religious epistemology that combined the

noblest of the senses (sight) with the most animalistic one (touch). That
combination was a natural one for Nemesius of Emesa (fl. ca. 390), a
bishop who drew from pagan medicine and philosophy for his Christian
anthropology, On the Nature of Man. As Nemesius ranked the senses,
sight came first, followed by touch, and only then taste, hearing, and
smell.119 By drawing sight and touch closer together, Nemesius could
entertain a more complementary, even self-correcting, relation between
the two: “For one sense shows up the errors of the other.”120 Although
touch would never be considered superior to sight, both continued to
share the same vital properties: contact, participation, and initiative.
These functional affinities between sight and touch invite further reflec-
tion on this “new tactile piety” evidenced in pilgrims’ devotions at the
holy places. When pilgrims reached across the crowded bodies at the
holy places to touch a sacred stone, column, or fragment of the True
Cross, that gesture did not subvert or even invert the sensorium. Nor
did that outstretched hand mime a dissatisfaction with vision’s power.
Instead, the pilgrims extended a hand that embodied the visual ray of
optics. To see and touch, then, were not exclusive activities but rather
convergent senses. That sight and touch were so polarized in philo-
sophical and theological hierarchies of the senses did not prevent pil-
grims from using both senses in concert at the holy places. Sight was not
replaced by touch; it had always been a form of touch.
At the holy places, pilgrims created the conditions for an encounter
with the sacred past as a present event. A fourth-century bishop
described pilgrims at the Oak of Mamre, a site associated with Moses
and the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron: “With the sight of the holy
places, they renew the picture in their thinking, and behold in their
minds the faithful patriarch . . . they reflect too on his descendants Isaac
and Jacob, and with the recollection of these men they become specta-
119. Nemesius, De nat. hom. 7.29 (Matthaei, 182.4–189.2; Telfer, 329).

120. Nemesius, De nat. hom. 8.30 (Matthaei, 189.3–195.7; Telfer, 334).
tors of the whole history concerning them.”121 As this moving passage

from Asterius of Amasea’s sermons reminds us, vision was believed to
contain the power to conjure, constitute, and respond to the presence of
the divine. The physical sense of sight was anything but passive in antiq-
uity; it was a form of physical contact between the viewer and the object.
For the pilgrim, that gaze extended to the sacred past. The physical
sense of sight triggered the “eye of faith,” which in turn perceived a past
biblical event as a present reality. The tactile and aggressive characteris-
tics of this gaze were grounded in ancient visuality. Sight and touch
remained discrete senses, but in late-antique Christian piety their func-
tions converged to create the conditions for a biblical realism. For
Paula, or any other pilgrim, to perceive the biblical past with such vivid-
ness would have been impossible had she not already shared in the
larger culture’s inclination to locate touch as the source of vision’s
power. That haptic function allowed vision to reach into the past and
sanctify the present.
Physical vision (and only then spiritual vision) both conjured and
engaged this biblical realism, convincing pilgrims that they could
indeed gaze more clearly on scripture. Scripture, to these pilgrims, was
a lived, visual experience. What happened when that powerful gaze
encountered the face of a holy person is the subject of the following
chapter.
121. Asterius of Amasea, Hom. 9.2 (quoted and trans. in Hunt, Holy Land
Pilgrimage, 103).
five
How to Read a Face

Pilgrims and Ascetic Physiognomy
Although Anthony of Egypt was regularly besieged by visitors, the

silent ones perplexed him most. On one occasion, he asked a frequent
visitor why, after repeated visits, the pilgrim requested nothing. “It is
enough for me to see you, Father,” the man replied.1 John of Lycopolis,
a man who claimed to “possess nothing worth seeing or admiring,” was
equally baffled by gawking visitors.2 Other holy men, less patient than
Anthony or John, chased away unworthy supplicants, vowing that “no
human will see my face!”3 To many holy men and women, the prospect
of becoming a spectacle was deeply unsettling. Yet on the margins of
these stories about the fragility of solitude were pilgrims who desired
urgently to see, going to extraordinary lengths to gaze on the ascetic’s
face.
1. Apophth.: Anthony 27 (Ward, 7). A sentiment echoed by Eudoxia, who

tells Daniel the Stylite that she visits him “to enjoy seeing you face to face and
to receive a perfect blessing,” V. Dan. Styl. 35 (ed. Delehaye, 33.13–15;
Baynes/Dawes, 27).
2. HM 1.20 (Russell, 55).
3. Apophth.: Arsenius 26 (Ward, 13). Cf. V. Cyr. (Vivian, 32, cf. 33); HL 5
(Alexandra; Meyer, 36–37)
134
How to Read a Face / 135
This desire to scrutinize the ascetic body, and particularly the face, is
a recurrent theme in the pilgrims’ descriptions of their own experiences.
Although these descriptions are too sparse to constitute a plausible
account of how the holy person actually appeared to the pilgrim, they
have the potential to reveal a great deal about how pilgrims perceived.
The cumulative effect of these descriptions suggests that travelogues
such as the History of the Monks and the Lausiac History were more than
transparent descriptions of past events. They could also serve would-be
pilgrims as primers for viewing the ascetic face and body. Taken as both
a viewer’s guide and a guide to viewing, descriptions of facial appearance
provide a valuable point of entry into the viewing habits of pilgrims to
holy people. The poetics of bodily description reveal the perceptual
constructs, or visuality, inherent in pilgrims’ experiences of living saints.4
In claiming a link between literary expression and visuality, I take my
cue from ancient assumptions about physiognomy, the ability to judge
human character from external appearances. Pilgrims’ impulses to see
and describe the face are best understood by considering the ancients
who saw vast interpretive possibilities in the human body. Although
physiognomy, both as a method and as a mindset, was never without its
critics, it showed remarkable resilience in ancient Mediterranean cul-
ture. Well into the late antique period, Christians and pagans claimed
that by “reading” individual facial features, they could reach a valid
4. On the scrutiny of visual appearance and performative dimensions of

ascetic practices, see Patricia Cox Miller, “Desert Asceticism and ‘The Body
from Nowhere,’ ” JECS 2 (1994): 137–53; Richard Valantasis, “A Theory of the
Social Function of Asceticism,” in Asceticism, ed. Richard Valantasis and Vincent
Wimbush (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 544–52, esp. 548–49.
See also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation
in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 221; Geof-
frey Galt Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), esp. 25.
136 / How to Read a Face
assessment of a person’s interior states. And these “readings” are

embedded in pilgrims’ reports.
What began as a hunch soon developed into a formal set of principles
and techniques laid out in elaborate physiognomic handbooks. It is this
effort at classification that remains closely associated with the word
physiognomy, which, narrowly defined, stands for a set of prescribed
techniques, outlined in various training manuals.5 The trained physiog-
nomist could consult these manuals, which divided the human body into
individual bodily features, and further subdivided each feature into vari-
ant sizes and shapes. Each body part represented a sign exposing the
person’s character, disposition, virtue, and soul.
Such manuals would have been of little use to Christian pilgrims,
who wanted more than a field guide to the human face. To pilgrims, the
ascetic’s face far surpassed the average human face and so could not be
reduced to the classifications or meanings suggested by the manuals;
most offensive, one suspects, would have been the pagan typologies that
drew comparisons with animals! Pilgrims would have to develop
another vocabulary by which to decipher and honor the ascetic face.
Manuals that would have been useless to the pilgrims nevertheless
remain useful for the modern interpreter of pilgrims’ reports. As a
repository for cultural attitudes toward physical appearance, physiog-
nomic handbooks offer important insights into ancient pilgrims’ desire
to scrutinize the ascetic body. Specifically, these handbooks can give the
5. The treatises appear in R. Förster, ed., Scriptores Physiognomonici (2 vols.;

Leipzig: Teubner, 1893). For an overview, including uses of physiognomy in
biography and literature, see Elizabeth C. Evans, Physiognomics in the Ancient
World (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 59/5; Philadel-
phia: American Philosophical Society, 1969), 5–17. For a valuable gender
analysis of physiognomic writing, see Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists
and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995), esp. 28–81. On the “logic” of physiognomy, see Tamsyn Barton, Power
and Knowledge: Astronomy, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 95–131.
modern interpreter deeper insights into the verbal portraits that pil-
grims made of the ascetics; they supply the formulas and vocabulary for
a Christian physiognomy. A closer analysis of these physiognomic
assumptions provides the background for an analysis of how Christians
adapted and developed a language and literature by which to articulate
a meaningful physiognomy for themselves.
In speaking of a Christian physiognomy, this chapter focuses on pil-
grims’ responses to the facial appearance of ascetics. Monastics devel-
oped their own physiognomic enterprise, often exhorting novices on
the type of self-fashioning that would result in an “ascetic” appearance.6
In their vocabulary for ascetic physiognomy, pilgrims put a distinctive
face on sanctity, combining techniques of ancient physiognomy with a
biblical sensibility. In addition, as a discipline based in visual scrutiny,
physiognomy can lead to a deeper understanding of how pilgrims con-
strued the processes and effects of seeing. Because pilgrims rarely com-
mented on the act of seeing,7 their descriptions of what they saw
become important for understanding the viewing subject implied in such
descriptions. Physiognomy provides a tool by which to uncover these
visual processes and the spiritual possibilities for those who engaged in
body-reading.
TALES OF “DISTINGUISHING FEATURES”
As late antique saints’ lives remind us, seeing a holy person had its
rewards. As Theodoret of Cyrrhus described James of Cyrrhestica’s
open-air asceticism, “He is observed by all comers . . . unceasingly
under the eyes of spectators.”8 In the Life of Anthony, healings, baptisms,
6. For a perceptive treatment of the function of physiognomy in advice to

female ascetics, see Teresa M. Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,”
JECS 6 (1998): 485–99.
7. One notable exception: HM 1.19 (Russell, 54–55).
8. HR 21.5 (Price, 134–35).
and conversions occurred the moment visitors laid eyes on a holy per-
son.9 Even works with few miracles held similar assumptions about
desert monastics; as one bishop described the monks to John Cassian,
“Old age and holiness, in bodies now bent over, shines so brightly in
their faces that the mere sight of them is able to teach a great deal to
those who gaze upon them.”10 That “mere sight” was also behind Palla-
dius’s invitation to readers to imagine a face-to-face encounter with the
holy people. In his prologue, he urged readers to pay special attention to
the physical appearance of ascetics: “Their faces abloom with grey hairs,
and the arrangement of their dress . . . and the piety of their lan-
guage.”11 For him, bodily appearance reveals sanctity. He quotes from
Proverbs: “The attire of the man and the gait of his feet and the laugh-
ter of his teeth show him for what he is.”12 By these directives, the
reader could become a vicarious pilgrim as well as a physiognomist,
seeking and scrutinizing physical appearances.
One finds an even keener interest in the facial appearance of monks
in the History of the Monks. In the first chapter, the face is central to a
story about a tribune’s wife. Despite various attempts to meet the holy
man John, she could not circumvent his long-standing prohibition
against female visitors.13 Only after her husband pleaded to John did he
finally agree to meet her, but then only on his own terms: “I shall appear
9. Healings: Athanasius, V. Ant. 56. Conversions: ibid., 88.2; V. Char. 14.

Callinicos, V. Hypat. 36.1. Cf. Apophth.: Anthony 27.
10. Conl. 11.2 (Ramsey, 409). A more sensational “lesson” appears in a story
told by Theodoret about a curious monk who watched as a supernatural light
was “flashing from the teacher’s head and revealing the composition of the let-
ters in the divine oracles” HR 3.6 (Price, 39).
11. HL prol. 16 (Meyer, 29).
12. Sirach 19:30, quoted in HL prol. 16 (Meyer, 29). Cf. John Chrysostom,
Catech. 4.26.
13. HM 1.4–9. Cf. similar tales in HR 3.22; Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Joh.
Hesych. 24 (ed. Schwartz, 219.19–220.4), which mentions a scheme to circum-
vent the prohibition, a promise of a dream, the dream appearance (but without
the reprimand), and the description of the saint’s dress and appearance.
to her tonight in a dream, and then she must not still be determined to
see my face in the flesh.” In that dream John approached her, conferring
both a blessing and a reprimand: “Why have you desired to see my face?
Am I a prophet or do I stand in the ranks of the just?” The next morn-
ing she reported both John’s words and his appearance to her husband.
In many respects it is a tidy story: a request is made, then denied, and
finally fulfilled, albeit in an unexpected way.14 More puzzling are the
two questions John puts to the woman. Is he denying that he has the
face of a prophet? Is he invoking the face of some biblical prophet? It
seems odd that all of John’s exasperation stems from her desire to see his
face. Another curious detail is the fact that she describes John’s appear-
ance to her husband, who has already seen John in person. One expects
the narrator to mention what was so special about that appearance; but
he remains silent on the matter. In the end, the story that has drawn so
much attention to the face does not answer its own question: “Why have
you desired to see the face?” The face is central to her desire and their
encounter; and that face, rather than any specific feature of John’s
appearance, may be the point.
When Rufinus of Aquileia recounted the story in Latin,15 he
attached even greater importance to the face. In this version, Rufinus
adds that the woman was prepared to “endure [as] many dangers as were
necessary in order to see his face.”16 And in the vision John urged her
“not to go on desiring the bodily face ( faciem corporalem) of the servants
of God in reality.”17 The aftermath of the dream is also described in
greater detail: she tells her husband what she saw and heard and details
14. This pattern is reminiscent of the Gospel story of the Syrophoenician/

Canaanite woman (Mk 7:24–30 and Mt 15:21–28, respectively).
15. PL 21.392–93. Citations follow the divisions of Schulz-Flügel’s edition
(PTS 34); translations are from Lives of the Desert Fathers, trans. Norman Rus-
sell (CS 34; Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1980), 139–55.
16. Rufinus, HM 1.10 (PTS 34:249): “multa namque eam dicebat pertulisse
pericula ob hoc tantum, ut faciem eius videret” (Russell, 143).
17. Rufinus, HM 1.14 (PTS 34:250).
the man’s “dress (habitum) and face (vultum) and all his distinguishing
features (signa).”18 More than the Greek version, this story conveys the
effect of the face, but it comes no closer to indicating what is “distin-
guishing” about John’s features.
Several practical and theological explanations may account for Rufi-
nus’s decision to emphasize the face and its distinguishing features. Like
the waking world, the dream world was filled with impostors and char-
latans; perhaps this woman simply needed some form of identification
by which to verify that she was indeed visited by John himself. Or per-
haps the need to see the “faces of God’s servants” may allude to the
thorny doctrinal debate about whether one could possibly “see the face
of God” or even speak of a God with bodily features.19 Later in the same
chapter, Rufinus adds a speech by John in which the holy man insists
that the eyes of the body are incapable of seeing the incorporeal God,
who remains perceptible only to the “eye of the heart” (oculus cordis).20
Within this overarching message of incorporeality, Rufinus draws atten-
tion to the corporeal aspects of the story. For instance, as John indulges
the woman’s desire to see the face, he also exhorts her to gaze with the
spirit (spiritu contempleris) at the monks’ deeds and achievements. The
tension also carries over to the coda, the woman’s post-visionary descrip-
tion of John’s distinguishing features, which assures the reader that—
the holy man’s objections notwithstanding—the face is the source and
measure of the miraculous.
One of the distinguishing features of a holy face was the hair.
Theodoret reported that Theodosius “wore his hair unkempt and
18. Rufinus, HM 1.17 (PTS 34:251). Cf. Russell, 143.

19. On the monks and pilgrims who were engaged in these debates, see
Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an
Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 20–25,
33–34, 39–42, 159–93, esp. 184. On the possibility of anti-Origenist revisions
to an earlier Greek text, see C. P. Bammel, “Problems of the Historia Monacho-
rum,” JTS n.s. 47 (1996): 92–104, esp. 99–102.
20. PL 21.395–98. Rufinus, HM 3.1–34, esp. 20 (PTS 34:255–62, esp. 260).
stretching down to his feet and even further and for this reason had it
tied round his waist.”21 Excessively long hair was also a distinguishing
feature of saints in later biographies, including Antiochus, an African
monk with woolly white hair that “hung down to his loins, and so too
did his beard.”22 Likewise, Euthymius’s “great beard that reached his
stomach” made quite an impression, as it is often mentioned in connec-
tion with the monk’s “dwarf-like build” and in descriptions of his subse-
quent dream appearances.23 The function of the beard as a touchstone
of ascetic identity is most starkly pronounced in the tale of Daniel the
Stylite, who encountered a grizzled stranger on the road to Palestine.
The reader is told only that the stranger was a “very hairy monk
(ôntrixov p_nu) . . . resembling Saint [Symeon].”24 The brevity of the
description speaks volumes, not only underscoring the identification of
hair and spiritual power but also alerting the reader to the stranger’s
identity long before the protagonist realizes he has met Symeon.
Although some Christians warned that excessively long hair could
undermine true asceticism,25 the power of ascetic hair endured in
hagiography. For instance, Theodoret reports that the Syrian holy man
James of Cyrrhestica had become so accustomed to having his hair
“plucked” by visitors that he could no longer feel this depilation.26 All
these episodes drew attention not just to the hair but especially to the
face it framed and concealed.
21. HR 10.2 (Price, 89); cf. 11.1.

22. V. Theod. Syc. 73 (Dawes/Baynes, 137); the portrait also includes details
of joining eyebrows and excessively long nails.
23. Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Euth. 40 (ed. Schwartz, 57. 20); cf. V. Euth. 10
(ed. Schwartz, 20.9–11).
24. V. Dan. Styl. 10 (ed. Delehaye, 11. 4; trans. Dawes/Baynes, 12).
25. For example, Jerome, V. Pauli 1 (refuting rumors that Paul of Thebes
had very long hair); HM 8.59 (long hair as conspicuous self-advertisement);
Cyril of Scythopolis, V. Sab. 22 (ed. Schwartz, 107. 1–7), on the blessing of a
beard singed by fire.
26. HR 21.9.
To many pilgrims, ascetics’ faces were believed to manifest the proofs

of the virtuous life. As visitors to John of Lycopolis remark in the His-
tory of the Monks, “One could see the saint already in his ninetieth year
with his body so completely worn out by his askesis that even his beard
no longer grew on his face.”27 And Palladius’s description of Abba
Macarius shows a similar scrutiny of the beard and face: he was “slight
and without a beard, having hair only about the lips and at the end of the
chin, for the asceticism he practiced did not allow hair to sprout on
him.”28 In a culture that read flowing beards as trophies of spiritual
powers and wisdom,29 these Christian portraits might appear deflated.
Ironically, however, the fact that both authors call attention to the
beard—or lack of it—perpetuates the notion of the revelatory beard.30
Were it simply a matter of conveying the effects of ascetic disciplines,
other body parts could just as clearly testify to the damage caused by
desert heat, poor diet, or fatigue. Yet, both Palladius and the author of
the History of the Monks keep the reader’s attention on the face as a mea-
sure of ascetic success.
To understand the pilgrim’s interest in the face, it is important to
recall that most pilgrims would have seen little more of the holy person.
Visitors to John of Lycopolis or Daniel the Stylite, we are told, had to
speak through a small window that would have revealed little of the
body behind the wall.31 Beyond such architectural obstacles was the
27. HM 1.17 (Russell, 54).

28. HL 18.29 (Meyer, 67).
29. H. P. L’Orange, Apotheosis in Ancient Portraiture (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1947), 30–33, 100, 102, esp. 32, citing Dio Chrysostom,
Orat. 35.2, 10 ff.; Philostratus, V. Apoll. 8.7; Herodotus, Hist. 2.36; Lucian,
V. Auctio 2; id., Philops. 29; cf. 32. Cf. Apuleius, Apol. 4, and John Englebert and
Timothy Long, “Functions of Hair in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses,” Classical Jour-
nal 68 (1972–73): 236–39 , which offers further literary examples of hair as code
for spiritual and mental states.
30. L’Orange, Apotheosis, 102.
31. HM 1.5; cf. V. Dan. Styl. 15.
monastic habit that covered the entire body, except for the face and
hands. By the late fourth century, Egyptian monks were adopting a
habit that consisted of a cowl as well as a sleeveless tunic, covering the
head and shoulders but leaving the forearms exposed.32 Thus in his
meditation on the symbolism of ascetic clothing, Evagrius directed his
audience to pay attention to the garment rather than to any skin that
might be exposed.33 The rest of the body is revelatory only insofar as it
dons the cowl, belt, scapular, and sheepskin garment, each of which
evokes a specific biblical verse, but all of which, together with the staff,
constitute a “compendious symbol” of the holy life.34
For pilgrims, however, the real symbols of ascetic accomplishment
were to be found in the face.35 Sunken eyes, emaciated cheeks, and thin-
ning hair were badges of honor. Given the all-encompassing monastic
habit, the woman’s request to see John of Lycopolis’s face seems natural.
Where else would she find a clearer testimony to his deeds and achieve-
ments?
Even for Athanasius, who introduced the spectacle of Anthony’s
entire body relatively early in the Life,36 the face remained the locus of
32. Joseph Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism (Washington,

D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), 211–14. On the symbolism of garments in
hagiographies of male saints, see Lynda Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and
Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997), 52–70.
33. Evagrius, Praktikos prol. (Bamberger, 12–15), finding symbolic meaning
only in the general fact of bare hands.
34. Ibid.; Ps 126:1 (cowl); Jn 5:44 (bare hands); 1 Cor 7:11 (belt); 2 Cor 4:10
(sheepskin); Gen 3:22; cf. Prov 3:18; Rev 22:2, 14, 19 (staff as tree of life).
Although Evagrius speaks of the ideal monk rather than of any individual, he
regards the habit as externalizing more abstract ideals and virtues, a tendency
inherent in physiognomic discourse.
35. For example, HM 8.6; 10.9.
36. V. Ant. (Gregg, 42): after twenty years’ seclusion “his body had main-
tained its former condition, neither fat from lack of exercise, nor emaciated
from fasting and combat with demons, but was just as they had known him prior
lifelong virtues, a visual metonym for a brilliant ascetic career. Describ-

ing Anthony’s preparation for death, Athanasius highlights this close
connection between the facial features and the soul’s progress:
His face had a great and marvelous grace. . . . It was not his height
or broad build that distinguished him from the rest, but the stability
of character and the purity of the soul. His soul being free of confu-
sion, he held his outer senses also undisturbed, so that from the
soul’s joy his face was cheerful as well, and from the movements of
the body it was possible to sense and perceive the stable condition of
the soul, as it is written, When the heart rejoices, the countenance is
cheerful; but when it is in sorrow, the countenance is sad. (Prov 15:13)37
In this description, Athanasius directs the reader’s attention to the face,

where the hidden soul is best perceived. In contrast to the scene at the
fortress, where Athanasius focuses on the hero’s overall physique, he
reserves his most explicit physical description here for the “cheerful”
face, which broadcasts the soul’s movements even when the body has
become ordinary. Like Palladius, whose prologue called attention to the
holy men’s faces “abloom with grey hairs,” Athanasius uses facial
description as a way to show how a pure soul would manifest itself. In
the face, writers found a means of rendering virtue visible.
This desire to find the soul revealed in bodily features was not unique
to ascetic Christians. In fact, the revelatory body was at the top of the
“wish list” for many in the late antique world, as a fable from Lucian’s
Hermotimus suggests. To decide who was the best artist among them,
Poseidon, Athena, and Hephaestus entered a competition. Momus was
called on to judge their disparate entries. Poseidon made a bull; Athena
to his withdrawal.” For a perceptive analysis of how this passage reflects

Athanasius’s theological ideal of the perfect union between body and soul, see
David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon,
1995), 242.
37. V. Ant. 67.4–6 (Gregg, 81); cf. G. J. M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie,
Vie d’Antoine (SC 400; Paris: Cerf, 1994), 313 n.1.
designed a house, and Hephaestus assembled a human being. More art

critic than judge, Momus praised Hephaestus for submitting a work in
progress, but observed that the man needed “windows in his chest
which could be opened to let everyone see his desires and thoughts and
if he were lying or telling the truth.”38 Christian pilgrims offered a ver-
bal solution to Momus’s desire: their descriptions in effect assembled for
the reader sufficient facial details by which to decode and detect a virtu-
ous soul. The connection between facial appearance and soul was con-
sidered so strong that Christians eventually provided solely the facial
details, leaving the reader to infer the state of the ascetic’s soul.
ANCIENT PHYSIOGNOMISTS
AND THEIR CRITICS
By the time Palladius and Athanasius discovered these various “win-

dows” on the soul, physiognomy had been an established practice for
many centuries. The notion of a connection between bodily appearance
and quality of character can be found as far back as the Homeric epics
and hymns. The bodies of heroes and gods were praised as kalos
kagathos, implying a bond between goodness and beauty, body and
soul.39 That bond, however, was regularly called into question. As the
story of Hephaestus’s incomplete man suggests, the ancients doubted if
the body might resist complete transparency, a way of safeguarding
some private sense of the self. In the Theaetetus, for instance, Socrates
mocks Theodorus’s suggestion that Theaetetus’s “snub nose and eyes
that stick out” provide the basis for any intellectual resemblance
38. Lucian, Hermotimus 20 (LCL 6:297–99).

39. For an excellent discussion of archaic Greek views of the body, see Jean-
Pierre Vernant, “Mortals and Immortals: The Body of the Divine,” in Mortals
and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1991), 27–49, esp. 36–37. Jacques André also makes a convincing
case for Babylonian precedents for physiognomic analysis (Traité de physiogno-
monie: Anonyme latin [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981], 9–10).
between the two of them. Tongue in cheek, he bids the young man to
draw near: “I want to see for myself what sort of a face I have.”40 Appar-
ently, for Socrates mirrors (and mirror images, in general) are of little
worth in the struggle to “know thyself.”41 Face to face with his doppel-
gänger, Socrates essentially placed limits on the interpretive possibilities
of the human body.42
Philosophers’ objections to physiognomic scrutiny notwithstanding,
the ancients developed methods for classifying physical appearances and
judging interior states from them. Some of those techniques were out-
lined in elaborate checklists detailing specific facial and bodily character-
istics and corresponding character types. The earliest surviving guide-
lines for this practice appear in an anonymous Aristotelian treatise titled
Physiognomonica. This author described the connection between soul and
body thus: “Soul and body, as it seems to me, are affected sympathetically
by one another: on the one hand, an alteration of the state of the soul
produces an alteration in the form of the body, and contrariwise an alter-
ation in bodily form produces an alteration in the state of the soul.”43 In
this sympathetic relation between body and soul, physiognomists were
taught to look for visible signs (semeia) and then infer their cause in the
soul. The signs, they claimed, were to be found all over the body: in ges-
40. Theaetetus 144e; cf. 143e (Levett, 261–62).

41. Cf. P. Oxy. 31.2603: “A man who has acquired a mirror . . . does not need
anyone to inform him or to testify to the character that lies before him,” quoted
in Dominic Montserrat, Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London: Kegan
Paul, 1996), 55.
42. On the doppelgänger from a lower class, see Pliny, Nat. hist. 7.53 (LCL
2:541).
43. Pseudo-Aristotle, Physiognomonica, 808b12–15 (in The Complete Works of
Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes [2 vols.; Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984] 1:1242). Cf. Aristotle, Gen. anim. 734b, 25–28, on the ensouled face. Cf.
also Pliny, who gives a sampling of physiognomic claims, despite his “surprise”
that “Aristotle not only believed but also published his belief that our bodies
contain premonitory signs of our career” (Nat. hist. 11.114.273–76, esp. 273
[LCL 3:605–7]).
tures, facial expressions, hair growth, skin texture, voice, and overall
physique. Even the feet spoke of the soul: soft, fleshy feet were thought
to betray a soft and “feminine” temperament, whereas delicate and short
feet revealed deep-seated malice.44 As Pliny skeptically remarked, the
physiognomist “does not, I imagine, note all these attributes present in
one person, but separately, trifling things, as I consider them.”45 What to
Pliny was “trifling” detail was, for the physiognomist, all part of a com-
plex hierarchy of signs. For instance, if a man’s feet indicated cowardice
but the shoulders signaled bravery, the physiognomist would follow a
system that held some body parts to be more trustworthy than others. At
the top of the hierarchy was the face, the site of a cluster of signs, and
home to the most decisive ones, the eyes.46
Body language has always been with us: posture, gestures, and facial
expressions can convey a range of emotions, moods, and dispositions. If
one seeks a more permanent judgment, however, the fleeting emotions
behind these expressions make this system of signs too unstable to be of
much use to a physiognomist. Physiognomy resisted circumstantial
signs, claiming instead to examine essential and unchanging ones. For a
stable, essential norm against which to scrutinize personal appearance,
they looked to gender, resemblances to animal species, and race; all
these traits were thought to leave permanent traces on the human body.
Accordingly, ancient physiognomists classified appearances according
to their inherent dichotomies: male/female, human/animal, and Greek/
barbarian. Through these categories, physiognomists inferred correspon-
dences.
Gendered comparisons presumed that, anatomical sex notwithstand-
ing, every human being could have a combination of “masculine” and
44. De physiognomonia liber 72 (André, 103).

45. Pliny, Nat. hist. 11.114.274 (LCL 3:605).
46. Pseudo-Aristotle, Physiognomonica, 806a20 (Barnes, 1:1239); cf. 814b; De
physiognomonia liber 20 (André, 66). On significance of the eyes for physiog-
nomic analysis, see Gleason, Making Men, 30–34, 55–58; L’Orange, Apotheosis,
110, 146 n.22.
“feminine” traits. Thus, a man with “masculine” traits was thought to

reveal a mental character that is “violent,” “impulsive,” “generous,” and
“savvy.” A man with feminine traits, however, revealed a character that
is “irascible,” “offensive,” “envious,” “sluggish,” “hypocritical,” “rash,”
and “docile.”47 Such classificatory schemes had profound effects on
ancient society: they were employed to determine whether one was fit to
rule, to marry, or to trade. Whether these inferences are valid is beside
the point. They reveal a profound trust in the evidence of the senses. All
first impressions, according to this scheme, were to be classified; only
then could they be trusted.
The zoological and racial systems employed different bases for com-
parison48 while retaining the deep-seated conviction that physical
appearances do not lie. Thus, a person whose features bore resemblance
to a lion (square visage, deep-set eyes, powerful and sinewy legs) could
be assumed to have a soul that is “generous and liberal, proud and ambi-
tious, yet gentle and just.”49 Since swine have small foreheads and were
considered stupid, humans with small foreheads must also be stupid. “A
small face marks a small soul, as in the cat and the ape: a large face
means lethargy, as in asses and cattle.”50 Racial stereotypes also pro-
vided the kind of static, essential readings physiognomists desired. Thus
a person who had “Egyptian” features was assumed to bear the moral
characteristics of the race: “cunning, teachable, rash, and keen on
sex.”51
47. De physiognomonia liber 3–8, esp. 4 (André, 52–56).

48. Yet even these systems used gendered distinctions to classify species. By
this line of thinking, persons who bore resemblances to “masculine” species,
such as the lion, boar, or eagle, were ascribed “masculine” character traits and
were to be valued over those who bore resemblances to “feminine” species, such
as the leopard, deer, hare, or peacock. See De physiognomonia liber 8 (André, 56).
49. Pseudo-Aristotle, Physiognomonica 809b (Barnes, 1:1244)
50. Pseudo-Aristotle, Physiognomonica 811b (Barnes, 1:1246).
51. De physiognomonia liber 9 (André, 56); translation from Barton’s rhetori-
cal analysis in Power and Knowledge, 105.
In all these methods, physiognomists claimed to know causes from

effects.52 As Maud Gleason describes this reasoning process, “What
purports to be an inductive science, built up from myriad specific obser-
vations, becomes a deductive science based on generalized impressions
and preexisting prejudices that are confirmed by observed details.”53
However artificial the inferences may appear to us, the ancients’ inter-
est in physiognomic description shows an enormous (if misplaced) trust
in visual perception.
Physiognomy remained popular in the Roman period. With the
impulse to make unseen realities visible, practitioners promised to
reveal the secrets of the face to predict the future. Professional phys-
iognomists were called on to vet prospective disciples, in-laws, and
debtors. In the second century, the discipline flourished as physiogno-
mists like Polemo prepared even more elaborate technical digests of
facial types.54 Physiognomy also witnessed a revival of sorts during the
fourth century, when one physiognomist drew on earlier treatises to
compile an anonymous Latin handbook, On Physiognomy. The subject
continued to draw new generations of proponents (and critics) even
into the modern period.55
52. On the logic and implications of ancient physiognomic thought, see

Barton, Power and Knowledge, 95–132, esp. 104–7; Gleason, Making Men,
34–36. See also André, Traité de physiognomonie, 7–24.
53. Gleason, Making Men, 35.
54. On Polemo, see Gleason, Making Men, 28–81, and Leofranc Holford-
Strevens, “Aulus Gellius: The Non-Visual Portraitist,” in Portraits: Biographical
Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, ed. M. J.
Edwards and Simon Swain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 93–116, esp. 113–16.
55. On the modern legacy of these techniques, see Michael Shortland, “The
Power of a Thousand Eyes: Johann Caspar Lavater’s Science of Physiognomi-
cal Perception,” Criticism 28 (1986): 379–408, esp. 379–80, with useful bibliog-
raphy; Barbara M. Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment
Art and Medicine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 84–103; Patrizia Magli, “The
Face and the Soul,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body, ed. Michel
Feher et al. (3 vols.; New York: Zone, 1989), 3:87–127, esp. 90–91.
On Physiognomy shows how deeply entrenched the notion of a read-

able body had become by the fourth century. Like the authors of the
earlier treatises, the Latin author invokes standard anatomical, zoologi-
cal, and ethnic classification schemes. One important departure, how-
ever, lies in the way the author conceptualizes all these inferences as a
language with constituent “letters.” These letters of physiognomic dis-
course, he claims, can be combined and recombined to form syllables,
words, and eventually entire sentences.56 Closer to a grammar than a
dictionary, this handbook allows for no exceptions, so great is the need
for order. The linguistic metaphor also carries the assumption that no
single component can reveal its full meaning apart from the other signs.
Thus the Latin physiognomist presumes that all judgments are based on
a cluster of features rather than on a single trait.57
This “deep grammar of the soul”58 was put to many uses. Physiog-
nomists claimed the ability not only to detect hidden vice but even to
foreknow it. The system also provided orators and biographers with a
convenient shorthand for praising or maligning characters through
coded descriptions of their height, hair, beard, eyes, or attire.59 Thus
emperors were made to look imperial, and criminals had to look crimi-
nal. For Pliny, the emperors were to be remembered by their peepers as
much as by their deeds: “Augustus had grey eyes like those of horses, the
whites being larger than usual in a human being. . . . Claudius Caesar’s
56. De physiognomonica liber 3 (André, 52).

57. On the problem of mixed messages in physiognomy, see De physiogno-
monica liber 10 (André, 58). Cf. Gleason, Making Men, 34–35.
58. From Stafford’s discussion of the eighteenth-century physiognomist
and theologian Johannes Caspar Lavater (Body Criticism, 95).
59. Geneva Misener, “Iconistic Portraits,” Classical Philology 19 (1924):
97–123, esp. 97. Along with Misener’s insights, See also Elizabeth C. Evans’s
enduring studies of ancient physiognomy, esp. “Roman Descriptions of Personal
Appearance,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 46 (1935): 43–84, and Physiog-
nomics in the Ancient World. One biographer who resisted using physiognomic
description was Aulus Gellius; see Holford-Strevens, “Aulus Gellius,” 95.
eyes were frequently bloodshot. . . . Gaius had staring eyes. . . . Nero’s

eyes were dull of sight.”60
Christian writers also characterized their heroes and villains by pro-
viding concise, abbreviated descriptions of personal appearance.61 The
eikonismos, as this trope was called, listed distinctive bodily features and
markings. Its most practical use was in census reports and in public
notices calling for the return of fugitive slaves.62 Eventually, these brief
physical descriptions also appeared in biography and romances as an
effective tool for characterization. For instance, the author of the Acts of
Paul described the apostle Paul as “a man small in size, with a bald head
and crooked legs; in good health; with eyebrows that met and a rather
prominent nose; full of grace, for sometimes he looked like a man and
sometimes he had the face of an angel.”63 Recent attempts to identify
the prototype for this description have yielded no conclusive result.64
60. Pliny, Nat. hist. 11.54.143–44 (LCL 3:521–23). On courtroom use of

these techniques, see Rhet. ad Herennium 4.47.62–4.49.63. On tropes for
describing fugitive slaves, see Montserrat, Sex and Society, 56–57.
61. Gilbert Dagron, “Holy Images and Likeness,” DOP 45 (1991): 23–33.
62. A first-century C.E. census record is preserved from Oxyrhynchus, listing
the members of a household along with particular facial details; Pausas is listed
“with a scar on his left cheek.” The men and women in another household are des-
ignated by “a scar on the forehead” or “no identifying mark (Üshmov)” (NewDocs 4
[1987] no. 21, pp. 88, 91.) Fugitive slaves: P. Oxy. 51.3616; 51.3617; reprinted in
NewDocs 8 [1998]: 9–19, esp. 9–10. See Diog. Laertius 4.46–47 (LCL 1:424) on
Bion of Borysthenes’s slave father, who “had not a face, but a narrative on his face”
(ôxwn oˆ prfiswpon, ÖllÇ snggraf¶n òpº po˙ pros∆pou). On tattooing and branding
in antiquity, see C. P. Jones, “Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman
Antiquity,” JRS 77 (1987): 139–55.
63. Acts of Paul, 3 (Wilson, 2:239).
64. Varying explanations of this passage appear in Robert M. Grant, “The
Description of Paul in the Acts of Paul and Thecla,” VC 36 (1982): 1–4; Abraham
Malherbe, “A Physical Description of Paul,” HTR 79 (1986): 170–75; Christo-
pher R. Matthews, “Nicephorus Callistus’ Physical Description of Peter: An
Original Component of the Acts of Peter?” Apocrypha 7 (1996): 135–45, esp. 140.
Rather than seek a one-for-one correspondence, Susan M. Calef proposes that
Putting aside this puzzle, a more modest observation is in order: this

unflattering physical description joins an external appearance (“bald
head”) with a superior, inner character (“full of grace”). Even if it
remains doubtful that any physiognomic manual contains the key to
these Christian descriptions of bodily appearance, it is clear that this
writer perceived a link between bodily appearance and internal states.
The links could be ironic, as in the case of this man with “crooked legs”
and the “face of an angel”; yet they testified to the keen sense that exter-
nal and internal were inseparable.65
Apocalyptic writers also relied heavily on the eikonismos as a way to
prepare the reader for the anti-Christ, as this description from the Syriac
Testament of the Lord suggests: “And these are the signs of him: his head is
as a fiery flame; his right eye shot with blood, his left eye blue-black, and
he has two pupils. His eye-lashes are white; and his lower lip is large; but
his right thigh [is] slender, his feet [are] broad, his great toe is bruised and
flat.”66 The signs that make up this description offer readers not only a
way to visualize this gruesome enemy but also, more important, a check-
list by which to recognize him on the last day. Like physiognomists who
claimed to foretell trouble, this description carries the implicit theologi-
cal message that together face and body reveal the future. The key to sal-
vation, as this description suggests, is the ability to read the facial signs.
more attention be paid to the placement and literary function of the description
(“Paul ‘in the Flesh’ in the Acts of Paul: Physiognomics and the Search for Par-
allels,” unpublished paper, summarized in AAR/SBL Annual Meeting Abstracts
1994 [Atlanta: Scholars, 1994], 159).
65. L’Orange observes a juxtaposition of transcendental expressions with
unflattering details in portraits of the fourth and fifth centuries (Apotheosis,
102–4).
66. Testament of the Lord, 11, from The Testament of the Lord, trans. James
Cooper and Arthur J. McLean (Edinburgh: Clark, 1902), 57–58; quoted in
Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with
Evil (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 68–74, esp. 68. Although the
entire work was redacted during the fifth century, the apocalyptic section (chap-
ters 1–14) may date from the mid-third century.
The salvific force of face-reading could also be applied to one’s own

features. Monastic leaders often exhorted monks and nuns to be atten-
tive not only to how they might appear to others but also to how they
appeared to themselves.67 This physiognomy of self-assessment appears
in Evagrius’s advice to virgins: “She who is sad about her blood-shot
eyes and the wasting of her flesh will not delight in her pure, passionless
soul.”68 His denunciation of vanity should not be misread as a condem-
nation of self-observation, which was a crucial component in ascetic
practice. The advice also points to a deeper connection between physi-
cal features and the pure soul. What Evagrius criticizes is not the vanity
or attention devoted to those signs but rather the misinterpretation of
those signs. If the bloodshot eyes and the pure soul are linked, then both
signs should inspire delight. This tension between upholding and deny-
ing desired physical appearances is not unique to Evagrius. As Teresa
Shaw rightly observes, many monastic writers struggled to reconcile the
expressive power of external appearance with the conviction that ascetic
ideals are ultimately achieved beyond the realm of bodily appearance.69
In addition to monitoring their own progress, several famous ascetics
were said to use their penetrating gaze on others. According to one
anecdote, Paul the Simple could “see the state of each one’s soul, just as
we see their faces.”70 One bishop was remembered for the gift of read-
67. Apophth.: Poemen 34 (Ward, 172); for references see Evans, Physiog-
nomics in the Ancient World, 78–79.
68. Evagrius, Sententiae ad virginem, 51, quoted in Susanna Elm, “Evagrius
Ponticus’ Sententiae ad Virginem,” DOP 45 (1991): 97–119, esp. 105. Additional
examples are discussed in Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,”
esp. 489–91.
69. Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,” 496. “The rhetoric of
virginity . . . urges conformity to a certain norm of behavior, practices, and
choices, while at the same time denying that true virginity is really about such
externals.”
70. Apophth.: Paul the Simple 1 (Ward, 205); cf. Athanasius (V. Ant. 67), who
cites physiognomic descriptions from Prov 15:13, Gen 31:5, and 1 Sam 16:12 to
underscore the sanctity of Anthony’s face.
ing faces: he could detect sinners by their black, scorched faces and
bloody eyes, and the righteous by their glowing white garments and
shining faces.71 Even demons were powerless to sever this tie between
character and outward appearance, as an episode from the Life of
Anthony makes clear. In one of several temptations, the devil assumed
the “visage of a black boy,” a disguise that bore the “the likeness of his
mind.”72 As Athanasius’s phrasing implies, outward appearances may
change, but nothing can hide one’s true identity from a perceptive phys-
iognomist. Behind all these stories of deception and recognition one
finds the physiognomist’s faith in the indissoluble relation between sign
and signifier, between what is seen and what is hidden but never beyond
skilled detection.
This need to establish connections between interior dispositions and
facial features may explain why many hagiographers chose to describe
the still face, disengaged from its body. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, for
instance, captured that still face in his portrayal of Eusebius of Teleda:
“We saw his face remain without any change. . . . Likewise his look was
not at times grim and cheerful at others, but his eyes always preserved
the same orderliness; they were sufficient proof of the calm of his
soul.”73 In this example, the subject is at rest, unperturbed by moods or
gestures; his external features appear as if immobilized, so that the
viewer can discern the stable features of his soul.74 The static quality of
Theodoret’s descriptions permits the reader to examine the face and
reach a permanent judgment. The face here appears decontextualized so
that details from an individual life can be abstracted and recombined,
71. Regnault no. 1715 (⫽ J715) in Lucien Regnault, Les sentences des pères du
désert: Série des anonymes (Spiritualité Orientale 43; Sablé-sur-Sarthe/Bégrolle-
en-Mauges: Solesmes/Bellefontaine, 1985), 299–301; cf. V. Mel. 34.
72. V. Ant. 6 (Gregg, 34); on this topos see Bartelink, Vie d’Antoine, 147 n. 2.
73. HR 4.10 (Price, 54).
74. Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 21.16 (quoted in L’Orange, Apotheosis,
125). On this freezing technique in modern physiognomy, see Shortland,
“Power of a Thousand Eyes,” 392.
forming a curriculum vitae of the ascetic life. By giving his verbal por-
trait a perfect stillness, Theodoret found a steady plane on which to
show virtue achieved, rather than virtue in progress.75
To the extent that these descriptions trace (or at least imply) a con-
nection between body and soul, they can illustrate physiognomic
assumptions without invoking the technical language of physiognomic
handbooks. Palladius never suggests, for instance, that a desert father
had the forehead of a pig, lion, or cow. Nor does Athanasius make an
issue of Anthony’s “Egyptian” face as the basis for inferring his charac-
ter. Even so, like the pagan physiognomists, these writers were deeply
concerned with how one might find the unchanging essence behind the
fleeting expressions of the face. To achieve that stillness, pilgrims and
hagiographers presented the face as a collage of individual features that
could be isolated, examined, and recombined to highlight the salient
signs. Given the prevalence of physiognomic thought informing physi-
cal descriptions, it seems unlikely that these writers intended to provide
what we could consider photographic representations. Instead, the
external features were selected as windows onto a soul deep within. The
face, or, more specifically, the eye beholding the face, held the key to
this repository of ascetic achievement. To understand how Christians
transformed that grammar of the soul into a grammar of sanctity, I turn
to two facial types, the faces of women and the faces of biblical figures.
WOMEN AND ASCETIC PHYSIOGNOMY
The physical appearance of ascetic women was a problem for late antique
Christians. The example from Evagrius reminds us that it was hard to
75. An emphasis also found in ancient statuary depicting philosophers; see

Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 124. Cf. Porphyry’s descrip-
tions of Plotinus (V. Plot. 13; LCL 1: 39): “When he was speaking his intellect
visibly lit up his face.” Here, however, the state of the soul is only apparent while
the sage is in action.
define the appearance of a perfect ascetic woman. As Teresa Shaw has

recently noted of treatises on virginity,76 the ambivalence toward judging
female appearance reveals the possibilities and limitations of ascetic
physiognomic thought. Building on Shaw’s analysis of idealized descrip-
tions, I consider verbal portraits of specific women as they appear in
saints’ lives and pilgrims’ reports. Some of these descriptions depart sig-
nificantly from the formulas for describing male ascetics. In his Life of
Pelagia of Antioch, for instance, Jacob recalls his first encounter with Pela-
gia after she abandoned a life of prostitution to become a monk. Dis-
guised as Pelagius, a renowned male recluse, she successfully hides her
female identity from him. Still, his retrospective description reveals a
decidedly female body, as he notes how the ravages of asceticism have
disfigured the youthful Pelagia: “[She had] become ugly, her pretty eyes
had become hollow and cavernous as the result of much fasting and the
keeping of vigils. The joints of her holy bones, all fleshless, were visible
beneath her skin through emaciation brought on by ascetic practices.
Indeed the whole complexion of her body was coarse and dark like sack-
cloth, as the result of her strenuous penance.”77 Two things may strike
the reader here. First, Jacob describes the entire ascetic body, without
drawing any connection to her soul.78 Her ascetic accomplishments are
presented in the surfaces of the face, without suggesting what they say
about the state of her soul. More unusual is the fact that Pelagia is dis-
guised as a man. Although during this encounter Jacob was under the
impression that he stood before a man, as narrator he speaks with the full
benefit of hindsight, using the feminine pronoun as a way to anticipate
76. Shaw, “Askesis and the Appearance of Holiness,” which focuses on

Jerome, Athanasius, Basil of Ancyra, Ambrose of Milan, and Eusebius of Emesa.
77. Syr. Pelagia of Antioch, 45 (trans. in Susan Ashbrook Harvey and Sebas-
tian Brock, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient [Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987], 60).
78. As Dominic Montserrat observes for ancient papyri, descriptions of the
entire body are usually reserved for slaves and victims of violence (Sex and Soci-
ety, 56–57). Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep. 19.9 (SC 363:248–50).
the discovery of Pelagia’s female identity. Although the narrator eventu-

ally discovers her true gender, he acknowledges that at the time he was
deceived by her disguise. Even when he notes a detail that might give her
away, such as her “pretty” eyes, the detail is not included to reveal her
gender. One wonders if physiognomy has somehow failed because Jacob
fell for the disguise.79 But that is not the message of this story. Jacob uses
physiognomy not as an instrument for unmasking deceptions and dis-
guises but rather to signal the physical traits that reveal a virtuous soul.
In this regard, physiognomy has served him well.
There are numerous other examples of physiognomy’s power to
reveal true ascetic identity, even in circumstances of mistaken gender
identity. In one monastic anecdote, when a female ascetic who dressed
as a man encountered her estranged husband, he failed to recognize
her new, ascetic identity, because she had become as dark as an
“Ethiopian.”80 Yet the reader never misses the signs. In both examples,
the disguise may conceal the fact that they are women, but the physiog-
nomic descriptions are more concerned with true ascetic identity. Both
stories illustrate a common feature of female hagiography: although, in
theory, any woman was capable of manly virtue,81 nevertheless in hagio-
graphic practice it was women dressed as men who most often earned
the physiognomist’s attention.82
79. On physiognomy’s power to avoid deceptive appearances, see De phys-

iognomonia liber 40 (André, 60).
80. Regnault (no. 1596, 10), Série des anonymes, p. 241. The reference to a
woman with dark skin may also imply that he mistook his wife for a ghost,
recalling a frightening female apparition from Acts of Peter 22, cited in John
Winkler, “Lollianos and the Desperadoes,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 100
(1981): 155–81, esp. 160–65.
81. On this topos, see Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Virginity and Its Meaning for
Women’s Sexuality in Early Christianity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
2 (1986): 61–88.
82. Stories of women disguised as men, however, are almost entirely absent
from the alphabetical apophthegmata, the exception being the story of a dead
Physiognomic description of disguised women is normally reserved

for settings and activities associated with men. Although there were
indeed women who actually settled in the farthest deserts or remained
itinerant, hagiographers depicted such actions as masculine and thereby
transgressive.83 The hagiographic examples above bear this out: the
facial descriptions of Pelagia and the estranged wife occur at the point
in the narrative when they are engaged in their most transgressive
behaviors, the former living as a recluse in Jerusalem and the latter as a
wandering hermit. In Pelagia’s story, which is longer, the placement of
the facial description is noteworthy. Rather than provide a facial
description when we are first introduced to Pelagia, Jacob departs from
narrative convention and waits until she is placed in an unusual situa-
tion, the hermit’s cell. Thus while the hagiographer provides a brief
portrait of the elaborately dressed prostitute as she appeared in a public
procession,84 he waits until she has assumed her disguise as Pelagius to
provide the reader with a description of her face. This postponement
suggests to the reader that women who engage in unusual activities have
an unusual appearance.85 Later hagiographers followed this logic for
saints, as in the Life of Syncletica in the Jordan Desert (as modern editors
have named this anonymous recluse from the sixth century). The narra-
tor recalls how her “face . . . would give off flashing sparks of light” only
amma who is initially mistaken for a man by the monks who discover her
corpse. Apophth.: Bessarion 4; cf. Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of
Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 262, 269–70.
83. Elm, Virgins of God, 275–81.
84. V. Pelag. 2 (Ward, 67).
85. This technique is not unique to Christian ascetic literature. As Jeanne
Fahnestock has observed of heroines in English novels, women who transgress
standards of beauty are also likely to have transgressed social expectations. The
face, Fahnestock explains, “remains an accurate mirror of the character, for the
heroine of irregular features is capable of irregular conduct.” (“The Heroine of
Irregular Features: Physiognomy and Conventions of Heroine Description,”
Victorian Studies 24 [1981]: 325–50, esp. 330–31).
after “Syncletica” has donned a male hermit’s garb.86 Thus hagiogra-

phers reserved the physiognomy of sanctity for women who tran-
scended their femaleness and, in rare cases, such as Syncletica’s, their
humanity.
These examples invite two further observations about the limits of
physiognomic description. First, as used by male hagiographers, it could
not testify to the full range of female ascetic experience. Unless the
women dressed as men or appeared after death,87 their appearance went
unnoticed. These undisguised women are certainly not absent from the
hagiographic record, but their faces are. Physiognomy, then, was a rhet-
oric reserved for male appearance,88 a hagiographic tool unprepared to
render or read the undisguised female face. Second, the paucity of
female facial descriptions reminds us that physiognomic language con-
structed identity rather than described it. Unlike a photograph, which
indiscriminately reproduces all details of physical appearance, physiog-
nomic descriptions selected and reassembled the most telling details.89
More than a brief exception to prove the patriarchal nature of phys-
iognomic taxonomies, the glowing female face shows how some ancient
Christian writers stretched and experimented with the physiognomic
vocabulary they inherited. This distinctively biblical physiognomy mer-
its closer attention.
86. De Syncletica in deserto Iordanis 14 (Vivian, 51). Cf. Gregory of Nyssa’s

descriptions of his sister’s glowing body and her “Godlike face” (qeoeidóv . . .
prfiswpon) after death (V. Macrinae 32.8–12; 34.27–28; cf. 15.15–19).
87. Mir. Thec. 14 (Dagron, 327–29); Regnault, no. 1715 (⫽ J 715), in Série
des anonymes, 299–301.
88. As Maud Gleason has observed of the use of physiognomy in sophistic
rhetoric (Making Men, 58–81, esp. 58–60) , it was first and foremost a discourse
among men, a coded language by which orators defined and gauged masculin-
ity. If Gleason is correct, then it becomes easier to understand why Christians
who adopted physiognomic conventions employed them to praise only women
who disguised themselves as males.
89. An observation made by Dagron, “Holy Images and Likeness,” 25; cf.
Magli, “The Face and the Soul,” 91.
GLOWING FACES
Two biblical facial types in particular captured the pilgrims’ imagina-

tion: the face of patriarchs (especially Moses) and those of the angels. A
description of Arsenius captures the mix-and-match technique by which
these were invoked: his appearance “was angelic, like that of Jacob. His
body was graceful and slender, his long beard reached down to his waist.
Through much weeping his eyelashes had fallen out.”90 Here the
author has combined three types of signs: the biblical referent (angel,
Jacob), the youthful body (graceful, slender), and the aging body (long
beard, no eyelashes). Neither denying the debilitating effects of ascetic
practice nor succumbing to them completely, the description includes a
reversal of this process, suggesting a body no longer subject to decay.
Some descriptions completely biblicize the face, as in that of Pambo,
who “received the image of the glory of Adam when his face shone like
lightning and he was like a king sitting on his throne.” As if to suggest
that these traits are not unique to Pambo, the author mentions that “it
was the same with Abba Silvanus and Abba Sisoes.”91 The History of the
Monks also ascribes a luminous face to Abba Or: “He looked just like an
angel. He was about ninety years old and had a brilliant white beard
down to his chest. And his face was so radiant that the sight of him
alone filled one with awe.”92 Another desert father, Theon, had “the
90. Apophth.: Arsenius 42 (Ward, 19).

91. Apophth.: Pambo 12 (Ward, 197).
92. HM 2.1 (Ward, 63; trans. modified). Angelic images are frequent in the
HM; see Historia monachorum, ed. and trans. André-Jean Festugière, (SH 53;
Brussels: Bollandistes, 1971), 29 n.3. Other angelic faces appear in Apophth.: Sil-
vanus 23 (Ward, 224). The apophthegmata (alphabetic collection) report that
God glorified the fourth-century monk Pambo “so that one could not gaze
steadfastly at his face [prosopon] because of the glory which his face possessed”
(Apophth.: Pambo 1; Ward, 196, modified). The luminous face is a common
theme in Theodoret (HR 3.6; 7.4; 21.9). For additional examples see Violet
face of an angel giving joy to his visitors by his gaze and abounding with
much grace.”93 And Paul the Simple was said to have a “shining face
and white body.”94 Angelic faces became a shorthand for any monk
who lived in perfect imitation of angels: they beheld God, sang his
praises, prayed continuously, and transcended the frail human body.95
The glowing face evoked a broader set of associations. Radiance and
light were typically thought to be features of divinized bodies, not just
in ancient Greek culture but also for ascetics.96 Rather than present a
body broken by ascetic practice, the pilgrims could use references to
light and angels to show asceticism’s highest achievement, the reversal
of the body’s decay and its transformation into the glorified body of the
resurrection.
The message of these multiple references to angelic bodies and faces
is more difficult to understand. With references to light so abundant in
the History of the Monks, one discovers what the art historian H. P.
L’Orange described as a “stereotyped mask of majesty,”97 dispelling
individual traits. Yet, is the Egyptian desert necessarily robbed of mean-
ing by this “mask”? The cumulative effect of these angelic references
MacDermot, The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1971), 753 §§ 35, 37; Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on
Monastic Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 181–82.
93. HM 6.2; Apophth.: Pambo 12. Compare HM 7.1 (Russell, 69): “Even the
sight of [Elias] was very impressive.”
94. Apophth.: Paul the Simple 1 (Ward, 205).
95. For example, Apophth.: Macarios of Alexandria 3; cf. Regnault, no. 1618
(⫽N618) in Série des anonymes, 263. On this topos, see [K.] Suso Frank,
AGGELIKOS BIOS: Begriffsanalytische und begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum
“engelgleichen Leben” im frühen Mönchtum (Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten
Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens 26; Munster: Aschendorff, 1964). For
additional references, see Pierre Miquel, “Monachisme,” DS 10:1554.
96. Miller, “Desert Asceticism,” 141–42. Cf. Apuleius, Met. 11.24; L’Orange,
Apotheosis, 95–96; Vernant, “Mortals and Immortals,” 44–45.
97. L’Orange, Apotheosis, 118.
conveys a great deal. The fact that the author of the History of the Monks
comments explicitly on that angelic radiance precisely when describing
a large gathering of nameless monks suggests that the angelic life is cor-
porate. The author describes the five hundred or so brothers gathered
around Apollo as “looking like a real army of angels, drawn up in perfect
order, robed in white.”98 Such monks are paradigmatic in their manifes-
tation of the biblical past, rendered here in ways that would have satis-
fied the rhetorician who wrote the Ad Herennium: for the use of bibli-
cizing physical detail achieves a more brilliant description of the
ascetics, or, in the words of the rhetorician, “more vivid, when express-
ing everything so lucidly [lit., before the eyes, ante oculos ponit] that [it]
can . . . be touched by the hand.”99
As literary tropes, these descriptions tell us little about the actual
appearance of the ascetic, but they do reveal an underlying habit of
viewing, or “perceptual construct,” a sensory guide to seeing the ascetic
body apart from any constraints of time or space.100 All these references
to the faces of patriarchs and angels suggest that the face was no longer
considered the locus of personal identity, where eye, chin, and forehead
provided any number of windows onto the individual’s past and present.
In these monastic examples, the face had become the canvas of biblical
identity, so that Pambo, Silvanus, and Sisoes were synonymous and
indistinguishable behind the glare of their shining faces. And by the
sixth century, when Cyril of Scythopolis described Euthymius as being
so bright that he resembled a beacon, sending out miraculous rays,101
the luminous monk had become too bright to show himself. As Hip-
98. HM 8.19 (Russell, 73). Cf. Regnault, no. 1487 (⫽ N487), in Série des
anonymes, 165, about a monk keeping as his goal an uninterrupted immersion in
the biblical past.
99. Rhet. ad Herennium 4.49.62 (LCL [Cicero] 1:385).
100. The term is borrowed from Miller, “Desert Asceticism,” 137.
101. V. Euth. 22 (ed. Schwartz, 35.1–3; Price, 30); cf. V. Sab. 7 (ed. Schwartz,
91.1; Price, 99).
polyte Delehaye astutely observes, the “custom of accumulating on a

single head all the glories of preceding heroes” erodes the individual on
whom they are conferred, “such that the hero entirely loses his true
physiognomy and emerges in disguise.”102
The erosion of individual portraiture through biblical typology is
hardly new to students of hagiography.103 More striking is what takes the
place of personal identity: a biblical typology crafted through details of
physical appearance, a biblicized physiognomy. What Delehaye referred
to as a “disguise” in pilgrims’ writings amounts to a Christianized phys-
iognomic system. Showing little concern for elaborate schemes of gen-
der, animal characteristics, or ethnicity, Christians collapsed all these
schemes into a biblical one. The final (and briefest) chapter of the History
of the Monks bears out this development: “We also visited another John in
Diolcos, who was the father of hermitages. He, too, was endowed with
much grace. He looked like Abraham and had a beard like Aaron’s. He
had performed many miracles and cures, and was especially successful at
healing people afflicted with paralysis and gout.”104 One might describe
102. The Legends of the Saints (trans. V. M. Crawford; London: University of

Notre Dame, 1961), 19.
103. For example, Bernard Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de
Scythopolis (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983), esp. 85, 102; Susan Ashbrook
Harvey, “Women in Early Byzantine Hagiography: Reversing the Story,” in
“That Gentle Strength”: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity, ed. Lynda
L. Coon, Katherine J. Haldane, and Elisabeth W. Sommer (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1990), 36–59; Derek Krueger, “Typological Figu-
ration in Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History and the Art of Postbiblical
Narrative,” JECS 5 (1997): 393–419. See also the work of Marc Van Uytfanghe,
who claims that the hagiographer “actualizes” the Bible more than its subject,
esp. Stylisation biblique et condition humaine dans l’hagiographie mérovingienne
[600–750] (Brussels: Koninklijke Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en
schone Kunsten van België, 1987), esp. part 2.
104. HM 26. All references to John’s face are missing from Rufinus’s Latin
adaptation (PL 21.460 ⫽ Rufinus, HM 33 [PTS 34:384]).
this chapter as a miniature verbal portrait. Yet on closer examination, it

lacks any descriptive force. There is the effect of resemblance, but with-
out any indication of the basis for the resemblance; the reader is never
told what specifically about John’s appearance suggests a resemblance to
Abraham or Aaron. We are dealing with a description that is no descrip-
tion at all.105 To this author, the fact of resemblance is what mattered
most, sending the message that resembling biblical exemplars and per-
forming miracles are intimately bound. In this chapter, then, the reader
is told not how to recognize John but rather how John acquired his
miraculous powers to heal paralysis and gout: through a resemblance to
Abraham and Aaron, he appropriated the biblical past.
Just as icons eclipse the identity of the subject, so too these facial
descriptions removed the individuals behind those faces. These verbal
portraits give the sense of a historical individual but stop short of pre-
senting a personal portrait. As Gilbert Dagron observes, “The writer or
the painter brings his model to the threshold of individuality, but it is up
to the reader to do the rest.”106 Individuality is approximated but never
fully achieved in these descriptions, which remake individual identity
into biblical and paradisiac prototypes. The eikonismos simulated an
experience that allowed the reader to perceive Abraham, Aaron, Moses,
or an angel in the face of a holy person.
When integrated into travel writing, physiognomic description func-
tioned as another tool by which to fragment and selectively reassemble
pilgrims’ experiences. By moving from one facial feature to the next, the
writer broke up his subject into parts through which the audience could
visualize the ascetic, a technique resembling the advice in late antique
105. To some degree it can be seen as the verbal antecedent of the silhou-
ette, a diagnostic device favored by Enlightenment physiognomists. Much as a
silhouette freezes and abstracts the human personality, admitting “neither
motion, nor light, nor volume, nor features,” so the description of John presents
only a shadow of the person (Stafford, Body Criticism, 97–98, esp. 100).
106. Dagron, “Holy Images and Likeness,” 26.
progymnastic exercises for describing persons in constituent parts.107

Just as travel writers extracted monuments from their historical and
social contexts, pilgrims extracted and isolated faces from their immedi-
ate spatial and temporal situations with the help of physiognomic
description. The face, like the monument, could evoke both what is and
what was, in large part because physiognomic perception froze and sta-
bilized the face. Just as monuments provided a way to order and control
the evidence of the senses, so physiognomic description ordered the
visual experience of meeting holy people. All these descriptions,
whether seen in the context of travel writing or physiognomic descrip-
tion, imply a habit of viewing.
THE EYE OF FAITH AND THE LEGIBLE FACE
We return to the eye, the starting place of physiognomic investigation

as well as the arbiter of conflicting signs, as many manuals claimed.108
Cicero reminded orators that the “eyes are the dominant feature of the
face,” the first place an audience looks. He advised orators to maintain
“constant management of the eyes . . . for fear of slipping into looks that
are in bad taste or into some distortion.”109 The physiognomist, too,
had to manage the eye so that it could attain a correct reading of what
was invisible to the uninitiated. In this regard, it is possible to speak of a
107. On the rhetorical advice to visualize persons by proceeding in parts

from head to toe, see Aphthonius, Prog. 12 (37.9–11 Rabe); Nicolaus of Myra,
Prog. (69.12–17, Felten), cited in Michael Roberts, The Jeweled Style: Poetry and
Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 42 n. 17. Cf.
Quintilian, Inst. orat. 9.2.40 (on presenting the subject in parts rather than as a
whole to achieve more vivid visualization).
108. De physiognomonia liber 10 (André, 58), in which twenty-four of the sev-
enty chapters devoted to the body’s “signs” address the eyes (ibid., 10–80,
esp. 10, 20–43 [André, 66–84]); cf. Gleason, Making Men, 30, 34.
109. Cicero, De orat. 3.59.222–23 (LCL 2:177–79).
physiognomic gaze, a mode of perception that isolates and reorganizes

the evidence of the senses.110 That gaze, however, is only implicit in
ancient discussions of physiognomics; they include little explicit
instruction on how to train the eye.
Ancient physiognomists regarded the eyes as objects to be scruti-
nized rather than as the instruments of scrutiny.111 The format of the
handbooks bears out this priority, offering a checklist of physiognomic
signs rather than a treatise on viewing. Details were organized to facili-
tate the cultivation of a memory for specific signs and their rank among
other signs.112 Yet, as any ancient trained in the arts of memory would
admit, the cultivation of memory was a matter of the eye. That memory,
according to the fourth-century On Physiognomy, was to be cultivated
through the lingering gaze, and the novice was advised to watch
patiently for genuine signs (naturalia) to emerge, avoiding fleeting (tem-
poralibus) or false appearances.113
Even if the pagan handbooks paid scant attention to how the phys-
iognomist saw, pilgrims to the living were mindful of it. They may not
have invoked the “eye of faith” as much as pilgrims to holy places did.
Yet they described their visual experiences in sufficient detail to convey
110. Shortland, “Power of a Thousand Eyes,” 388.

111. An interesting contrast is the importance of the physiognomist’s eye in
treatises from the Enlightenment. During the eighteenth century Johann Cas-
par Lavater insisted that “all men who have eyes have talents to become phys-
iognomists” (Essays on Physiognomy, 62, quoted in Shortland, “Power of a Thou-
sand Eyes,” 390). One had to cultivate a “third eye,” one that would do what the
untrained eyes cannot: isolate, magnify, and discern the contours of facial and
bodily parts (Shortland, “Power of a Thousand Eyes,” 391–92, 397; cf. Stafford,
Body Criticism, 84). The hermeneutic implications are explored by Carsten
Zelle, “Soul Semiology: On Lavater’s Physiognomic Principles,” in The Faces of
Physiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater, ed. Ellis
Shookman (Columbia, S.C.: Camden, 1993), esp. 52–53.
112. De physiognomonia liber 11 (André, 58–59).
113. Ibid. (André, 59–60).
the value they placed on the visual processes that shaped their percep-
tions. As two modes of visual scrutiny, the pilgrim’s eye of faith and the
physiognomist’s gaze shared much. Like pilgrims’ reports, physiog-
nomic description can create a sense of order out of confusion. Both
travel writers and physiognomists aimed to equip readers with a sense of
control and insight. With that control came the assurance that a body
says what it means. To these travelers, physiognomy provided the lan-
guage of last resort, allowing their eyes to read the soul’s inscriptions on
the body.114
Similar to the “eye of faith” awakened at the holy places, the form of
vision developed by pilgrims to the living was both lingering and tactile.
Just as the physiognomist pierced the surfaces of external appearances
to gain insight into the deepest recesses of the soul, so the eye of faith
looked through signs to perceive another, more genuine reality. For
Paula, that reality was biblical. After seeing Golgotha and Bethlehem,
the next (and last) occasion when Paula visualized a biblical figure was
when she visited monks in Egypt. “In each holy man,” Jerome reports,
“she believed she was seeing Christ.”115 Elsewhere, Jerome described a
similar gaze, when he spoke of how the apostles looked on Jesus of
Nazareth: “With more penetrating eyes, [they] beheld not merely what
appeared, but what was hidden away in the body.”116 Both examples
suggest a lingering gaze, capable of looking through and beyond exter-
114. Confidence in this pure language of the body was most enthusiastically
endorsed by Lavater when he wrote, “Even now, every hand, every finger, every
muscle is a meaningful language for eyes that prejudice and ignorance have not
blinded to nature, which is nothing but expression, nothing but physiognomy,
but visual presentation of the invisible, nothing but revelation of the language
of truth” (Aussichten, 110–11; translated in Zelle, “Soul Semiology,” 53). For a
fascinating discussion of Lavater’s theological justification for physiognomy, see
Stafford, Body Criticism, 91–93.
115. Ep. 108.14 (NPNF 2.6.202).
116. Jerome, Hom. 61 (FC 57: 32–33).
nal appearances to find “hidden” realities. These physiognomic descrip-

tions suggest that the face is not only legible but transparent, revealing
the secrets stored in the body.117
Likewise, the face of the male ascetic constituted the meeting ground
of the biblical past and the pilgrim’s present. With a parallax vision capa-
ble of perceiving both ascetic achievement and biblical presence, the
pilgrim could gaze at and through the face, a textured window onto the
biblical past. By using facial descriptions that assimilated holy persons
into biblical figures, pilgrims destabilized or even displaced individual
identity altogether; but this was a small price to pay for the stable, visual
experience of discovering the face of a biblical patriarch. Physiognomic
scrutiny constituted the biblical hero by disassembling the ascetic face
in order to conjure a biblical one in its place. Put in temporal terms, the
pilgrim dismantled a biographic present as a way to enter a biblical past.
This collapsing of time is what sets apart Christian uses of physiog-
nomy from their pagan counterparts. Although the mechanics of the
physiognomic gaze are similar in the pagan manuals and the Christian
travelogues, the hidden realities remain distinct. Pagans used physiog-
nomic analysis to cast a suspicious gaze into the future and detect hid-
den vice: Should I trust this man with my money? Does he have a crim-
inal disposition? Christian pilgrims were less interested in reading faces
to detect misers, liars, or gluttons; they hoped instead to discover bibli-
cal patriarchs, prophets, and angels. What the travelogues suggest, then,
is that pilgrims gazed on holy people for a glimpse into a sacred past,
rather than into the future. In physiognomic rhetoric, pilgrims found a
nimble vehicle for glorification, rather than a “technology of suspi-
cion.”118
117. Cf. J.-M. Fontanier, “Sur une image hiéronymienne: Le visage sidéral
de Jésus,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 75 (1991): 251–56.
118. The phrase is borrowed from Gleason, Making Men, 55.
For pilgrims to the living, the eye of faith was physiognomic in

nature. By seeing faces as well as seeing through them, pilgrims to holy
people also engaged in a type of biblical realism. It detected resem-
blances as a way to form a bridge to the biblical past. The pilgrim saw
the external appearance, which provided the semeia, which would
engage a more piercing vision. In other words, one gazed at external
features in order to gaze through them. Whether visualizing biblical
events or coming face to face with the shining face of an angel, pilgrims
transcended temporal barriers. Seeing the face of the desert saints
allowed pilgrims to participate in the biblical past and scriptures in new
ways. As a mode of seeing, then, the “eye of faith” allowed pilgrims to
the living to interpret bodily appearance, using the assumptions of
ancient physiognomy, to serve their need for a biblical realism. As a
driving force of their pilgrimages, this technique gave rise to a visual
piety that combined physiognomic scrutiny with the tactile gaze of
extramissionist optics; the result was analogous to the type of biblical
realism encountered at the holy places.
More important, this Christianized physiognomy lent itself particu-
larly well to a practice that sought out sanctity in living, moving desti-
nations, such as the holy person. With physiognomy, pilgrims had the
means to freeze and isolate the biblical face. Whether that lips on that
face scolded or dismissed the pilgrim was beside the point. What was
important was the way physiognomic description could still that face
long enough to allow the perception of biblical realities. This physiog-
nomic rhetoric, with its biblicizing tendency, performs a function simi-
lar to that of the Brazilian storytelling encountered by Candace Slater
while studying a local saint.119 Unlike the pilgrims’ stories, Slater
observed, stories told by the residents of the saint’s town included many
concrete details about the saint’s actions, shade of eyes, gait, tone of
119. Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeast Brazil (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1986), esp. 117–48.
voice, and gestures, all of which conferred a “physical as well as moral

presence” on this figure.120 To similar ends, late antique pilgrims
employed physiognomic description to give a physical presence to the
biblical reality they experienced. The verbal portraits, then, were “prod-
ucts of and for visualization,”121 a biblicized physiognomy pilgrims
devised to make the Bible visible, and not just audible, in the desert.122
By drawing on physiognomy to describe their visits, pilgrims to the liv-
ing found a language for portable sanctity. If the sacred destination
stared back, the pilgrim had the physiognomic eye to circumvent that
stare and see the soul within. One no longer needed to stand at the site
of the crucifixion to see Christ or on Mount Sinai to see Moses. Instead,
the pilgrim could come face to face with these biblical exemplars by gaz-
ing intently at the face of a holy monk.
120. Ibid., 123–24.

121. The phrase is David L. Haberman’s ( Journey through the Twelve Forests:
An Encounter with Krishna [New York: Oxford, 1994], xiii). For a stimulating
analysis of John Chrysostom’s use of verbal portraits, see Margaret M. Mitchell,
“The Archetypal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul,” Journal of Reli-
gion 75 (1995): 15–43, esp. 19–28.
122. Cf. the perceptive analysis of orality in desert hermeneutics by Douglas
Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in
Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
six
Pilgrims to the Living

and the Memory of the Eyes
As one grows familiar with the History of the Monks and the Lausiac His-
tory, it is easy to forget that for lay Christians in late antiquity, monks and
nuns were indeed strange. The authors of these works navigated
between the exotic and the familiar, using travel writing and physiog-
nomic techniques to construct and control the reader’s perceptions. The
brief notice, in particular, maintained a firm grip on the reader’s atten-
tion, directing it to the biblical quality of these perceptions. As a framing
device, the brief notice edited and reshaped the perception of monastic
life. Within those tightly controlling narrative devices, the authors and
audiences presupposed a particular mode of vision, the eye of faith, with
which pilgrims and audiences claimed to see external details but also to
pierce them in order to conjure the biblical realities that were believed to
rest just beneath the surface of ascetic appearance. Through this mode of
vision, the biblical past irrupted into the pilgrim’s present.
The subtle interplay between biblical realism, monasticism, and the
eye of faith is not unique to pilgrimage. In this final chapter, I explore
the affinities between pilgrims’ assumptions about vision and the visual
experiences related to other aspects of piety in late antiquity through a
selective investigation of Christian attitudes toward the veneration of
relics and the cult of icons. Although either one of these subjects merits
171
172 / Pilgrims to the Living and the Memory of the Eyes
several book-length studies, I limit my remarks to the conception of the

beholder inherent in these devotions, leaving aside particular images,
architecture, or ornamentation related to those practices.1
Whether on pilgrimage to places or to people, Christians accented
the visual as a way to integrate the contradictions of their experiences.
In describing monks as familiar patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, pil-
grims extended the biblical vocabulary to monastic settings and to the
desert generally. Through these travelogues, audiences witnessed not
only the world of monasticism but also the world of the Bible itself. In
short, travel writing and physiognomy made the biblical past accessible.
Instrumental in that accessibility was the brief notice, which pro-
vided “concrete vehicles for conception,” to borrow the words of David
Haberman.2 As Haberman observes for Braj, a circuit of holy places
relating to Krishna, storytelling serves as “a language by means of
which a previously inaccessible world is evoked and realized.”3 The
same applies to Christian pilgrims to the living, who framed their sub-
jects as outside individual and regional history in order to “evoke,” or
draw out, the biblical past. The short notices of the saints in these trav-
elogues lent themselves well to this process of abstraction, reconstitu-
tion, and “externalization.”4 List-like descriptions reduced the monas-
tic life to the elements of the biblical image: a telling beard, a
reminiscent charism, a biblical landscape. Unlike John Chrysostom,
who addressed his audience of new converts with monks present in the
room, the pilgrims felt no compulsion to remind the readers what to
“overlook;” instead they were free to omit the types of details the
preacher had to confront. If the ties between city and desert compli-
1. For a rich synthesis of material and literary evidence relating to shrines,

see now Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in
Early-Medieval Saints’ Shrines,” Speculum 72 (1997): 1079–1106.
2. David Haberman, Journey through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with
Krishna (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 53.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 54.
Pilgrims to the Living and the Memory of the Eyes / 173
cated the picture, then such details were muted.5 If the body in motion
disrupted the biblical image, then the writer focused on the face at rest.
Rendering the Bible visible meant freezing, isolating, and then high-
lighting the biblical image perceived within. Only then might the audi-
ence see Moses, Jacob, Aaron, or angels.
Miracles and typology were two other means for rendering the Bible
visible to readers of the travelogues. In tales about miraculous feedings,
healings, and the abundance of nature, travel writers gave a quantity and
substance, a concreteness, to this biblicizing effect. Abraham’s looks,
Aaron’s beard, or Jacob’s shining appearance put a face on that biblical
past. And wherever the pilgrim-authors claimed that the monks contin-
ued the work of Jesus and the apostles, the authors biblicized the present.
Underlying these efforts is the conviction that the biblical past would
become visible only to those who were capable of both seeing and
responding to the sacred presence they beheld. The “eye of faith,” as
Christians referred to this interactive visuality, was tactile as well as
visual, not just in the sense of contact but even of engagement. As the
literary critic Gabriel Josipovici once said, “By touching, I think, we
experience a sense of our own implication in a history longer and
broader than our personal one: I am—and it is—and touch can some-
how affirm that truth.”6 For the same reasons that Josipovici values
touch, that is to say, for its ability to lead him into the past, late antique
pilgrims cherished sight. By implicating them in the biblical past, sight
manifested the reality of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in the monastics
they encountered.7 Yet without the tactile aspect of vision, pilgrims such
as Paula would never have been able to persuade audiences that the
sacred past could be seen in the dank air of a cave.
5. For an insightful treatment of this selectiveness, see James E. Goehring,

“The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early
Christian Egypt,” JECS 1 (1993): 281–96.
6. Gabriel Josipovici, Touch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 70.
7. The prologues and epilogues to these travelogues set the short-term
journey in a much broader context of sacred history. Typically the time of Jesus
In the pilgrims’ texts, vision provided a vehicle to the past. Their lin-
gering gaze scoured the cracks and crevices of the present for a means to
enter and thereby bear witness to that past. Unlike theologians who
warned against deceptive perceptions,8 pilgrims trusted the eyes of the
body. Far from dimming the eyes of faith, the eyes of the body, as pilgrims
described them, were believed to open and engage the eyes of faith. In
this respect, pilgrims drew from physiognomic thought and optics to
elongate the visual ray of extramissionist theories. Whereas optics imag-
ined a ray that stopped at the surface of its object, pilgrims believed the
ray touched the surface of the object and then continued to illuminate
the biblical reality within. The “hand” of that tactile gaze reached behind
the surface appearance and drew the eternal face into a temporal one. That
aggressive vision, capable of integrating the biblical past into the medita-
tive present, is also to be found in other types of veneration. By evoking
some of these affinities, we may notice the outlines of a larger ritual con-
text for late antique pilgrimage. I examine a few examples from relic ven-
eration and the cult of icons with the aim of identifying how the processes
and the effect of vision defined the religious experiences involved.
In late antiquity several devotional practices assumed an increas-
ingly sensory and particularly a visual dimension. The Eucharist, relics,
and eventually icons became conduits for divine presence precisely
because of the visual experiences they elicited in the beholder. As
diverse as these ritual objects of bread, bone, and image might have
appeared, the practices surrounding them shared a common conception
of vision and the beholder. This commonality suggests that one can go
beyond loose affinities to speak of a “visual piety,” by which I mean
Christian practices in which a lingering gaze conjures a sacred presence.
or even of the patriarchs is the stated beginning for the entire narrative. See for
example, HM prol. 4, epil. 2; HL prol. 6.
8. For instance, Ambrose of Milan: “We cannot comprehend such heavenly
truth with hands or eyes or ears, because what is seen is temporal, but what is
not seen is eternal” (De bono mortis, 3.10 [FC 65:77]).
That lingering gaze was central to fourth-century eucharistic prac-

tices.9 As Cyril of Jerusalem describes the ritual, the chanter invited
communicants to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”10 No sooner had
he invoked these two senses than Cyril warned the communicant to
mistrust the physical sense of taste. Instead he showed how to sanctify
and prepare the eye to receive this full, divine presence. The new con-
verts were instructed to take the eucharistic wine and touch their “eyes
and brow and the other sense organs” with it.11 As Cyril understood the
Eucharist, the eye was privileged as the organ that senses the whole
divine presence from its parts. With the wine still fresh on the eye, the
catechumen consumed the bread, an act that Cyril claimed would make
the “face of the soul shine.”12 All this was in preparation for the soul’s
vision of God, an experience akin to the eye’s all-encompassing and sin-
gular perception.13 In the Eucharist, as Cyril explained it, not only is the
physical eye sanctified through ritual gestures, but those very acts pre-
pare the eye of faith to see divine realities, with an immediacy that is the
unique property of physical vision.
John Chrysostom also invoked the connection between seeing and
biblical realism in his description of the Eucharist. In On the Priesthood
he described how the priest must be “pure as if he were standing in
heaven itself.”14 The immediacy of that divine perception, according to
John, was rooted in visual experience. He exhorted the congregants,
“When you see the Lord sacrificed and lying before you, and the High
Priest standing over the sacrifice and praying, and all who partake being
9. For an insightful discussion of the sensory implications of the Eucharist

see Geir Hellemo, Adventus Domini: Eschatological Thought in Fourth-Century
Apses and Catecheses (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 183–84, 188–94.
10. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Myst. 5.21 (FC 64:203; cf. Ps 34:9).
11. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Myst. 5.22 (FC 64:203).
12. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. Myst. 4.9 (FC 64:186; cf. Ps. 104.15).
13. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 6.2 (FC 61:148–49); Hellemo, Adventus Domini,
191–92.
14. John Chrysostom, De sacerdotio, III.4 (Neville, 70).
tinctured with that precious blood, can you think that you are still
among men and still standing on earth? Are you not at once driven to
heaven?”15 As these two bishops understood the eucharistic rituals, the
goal was to integrate visual experience, biblical realism, and the partic-
ipation of the beholder. When the eyes or vision came in contact with a
small drop of wine or a broken piece of bread, the entire salvific drama
was thought to fill up the space and encompass the viewer.
Christian discussions of relics also point to a visual piety that
attached tremendous power to the beholder. A relic has no intrinsic
meaning or existence. If detached from its worshipping community, it is
void of power or significance: even Jerome conceded to his opponent
Vigilantius that a relic is indeed “a bit of powder wrapped in a costly
cloth.”16 But Jerome also knew that the eyes of the devout could bring
that bit of powder to life. For the onlookers who welcomed the prophet
Samuel’s relics as they were translated to Chalcedon, it was “as if they
beheld a living prophet in their midst.”17 Implied in this remark is that
any wholeness attributed to the object is an effect of the beholder’s eye.
Visual perception constitutes that reality of wholeness.
Gregory of Nyssa described at greater length the role of the
beholder in generating this presence in a sermon honoring the martyr
Theodore: “Those who behold [the relics] embrace them as though the
actual body, applying all their senses, eyes, mouth, and ears; then they
pour forth tears for his piety and suffering, and bring forward their sup-
plications to the martyr as though he were present and complete.”18
15. Ibid.
16. Jerome, C. Vigilant. 5 (NPNF 2.6.419).
17. Ibid. On the adventus ceremony see Kenneth G. Holum and Gary
Vikan, “The Trier Ivory, Adventus Ceremonial, and the Relics of St. Stephen,”
DOP 33 (1979): 115–33, esp. 116–20. On the Roman imperial antecedents for
the practice, see Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 17–61.
18. PG 46.740ab; translated in E. D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the
Later Roman Empire (A.D. 312–460) ( Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 133.
Here it is the senses, and not strictly the relic, that provide the “tool for
conjuring up the physical presence of the saint.”19
In other cases, the sense of sight acted alone to conjure and contem-
plate the saint’s presence from a fragment. In a letter accompanying a
fragment of the Cross, Paulinus of Nola emphasized the power of the
eye to define the object of veneration: “Let not your faith shrink
because the eyes of the body behold evidence so small; let it look with
the inner eye on the whole power of the cross in this tiny segment.
Once you think that you behold the wood on which our Salvation, the
Lord of majesty, was hanged with nails whilst the world trembled, you,
too, must tremble, but you must also rejoice.”20 In this passage, vision
constitutes and responds to the presence of the divine, restoring the
presence of the whole Cross out of a tiny fragment. That generative
power of vision is readily apparent in the way Paulinus fills out the
image. The eye here has recreated the entire biblical event, furnishing
Christ, the nails, the witnesses, and their reaction to the sight. Frag-
mentation may have diminished the size of the Cross, but the eye can
mend those breaks. Likewise, the passing of time may have separated
the devotee from the event of the Crucifixion, but vision overcomes
that temporal fragmentation.21 Seeing the sliver of wood makes it pos-
sible to imitate the witnesses to the event and thereby participate in the
event itself.22
19. Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images before Iconoclasm,” DOP 8

(1954): 83–150, esp. 116.
20. Ep. 31.1 (Walsh, 126).
21. On the function of the relic and the passio for integrating past, present,
and future, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin
Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 78–82. Patricia Cox
Miller has recently noted the paradox of fragments that “remained miraculously
whole despite being constantly broken up into fragments” (“ ‘Differential Net-
works’: Relics and Other Fragments in Late Antiquity,” JECS 6 [1998]: 113–38,
esp. 122).
22. Cf. Hunt (Holy Land Pilgrimage, 132), who comments on the passage:
“Paulinus’ interpretation here amounts to a reproduction, through the portable
In one of the most extensive discussions of relics in late antique liter-

ature, the bishop Victricius of Rouen, a friend of Paulinus, reiterated the
power of vision in the act of veneration. When gazing at a relic, Victri-
cius explained, one sees blood and ashes with the eyes of the body; only
then do the eyes of the heart open, allowing the viewer to recognize the
presence of the saint in a small fragment.23 Here again, physical seeing
is the first step to reconstituting wholeness from a fragment.
That conjuring power of vision is also inherent in the veneration of
images as understood by the eighth-century theologian John of Damas-
cus. As a defender of images, John felt compelled to defend all forms of
visual piety, whether icons, holy places, or relics. Incarnational theology
is central to his program because it marks a moment in time when God
made himself visible. “I boldly draw an image of the invisible God, not
as invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes by partaking of
flesh and blood.”24 As a result of that event, believers see God in new
ways. “Before” and “after” here represent two modes of seeing. As John
explained this bifurcated visuality: “I gaze upon the image of God, as
Jacob did, but in a different way. For he only saw with spiritual sight
what was promised to come in the future, while the memory of Him
who became visible in the flesh is burned into my soul.”25 According to
John, this comprehensive and continuous revelation resulted in the
incarnate God suffusing the universe with many types of images or rep-
resentations of himself.
medium of the relics, of the immediate and visual reaction by the pilgrims at the
holy places in situ.”
23. De laude sanctorum, 10 (PL 20.452; Herval, 134–36). “Cur igitur
reliquias appellamus? Quia rerum imagines et signa sunt verba. Subjicitur oculis
cruor et limus. Sed nos nunc totum in parte dicendo non corporalium luminum
obices sed cordis oculos aperimus?”
24. De imag. 1.4 (Anderson, 16); cf. 3.17: “All images reveal and make per-
ceptible those things which are hidden.”
25. Ibid., 1.22 (Anderson, 30).
The notion that many things can represent God and thus reveal God
is illustrated in John’s discussion of what he calls “relative worship,” that
is, worship of people and things who bear the divine image but are not
divine in and of themselves. Holy people and holy places belong to this
category. God dwells in holy people because they have become “like-
nesses” of God. And holy places merit worship because they are also
“receptacles of divine power.”26 What unites these forms of relative
worship is not their discrete forms but rather the notion that the wor-
shiper “approach[es] God” through them.27
Words, people, pictures, and objects are worthy of veneration, John
insists, because they produce visible reminders of God. In this respect,
they share equivalent functions. Although Christians venerate different
forms, each form has the function of making the divine visible. The
equivalence in effect secures John’s position. Doing away with images
will not dispel the idea that God remains visible in other forms. “Either
refuse to worship any matter, or stop your innovations.”28 On what
grounds can John equate such diverse types of “matter”? What made it
possible for him to assume that a drawing, an object, a person, and a
word have equivalent functions? His entire argument is grounded in the
eye, an eye capable of knowing the incarnate God and the visible Bible.
By this reasoning, scripture itself is an image that makes the divine pres-
ent to the senses.
These eighth-century debates over images called into question what
pilgrims had puzzled over for centuries prior to this controversy: What
makes the divine visible? And can the senses satisfy the desire to per-
ceive God? For iconophiles, such as John of Damascus, a theory of the
beholder was crucial to the defense of sacred images. More important
26. Ibid., 3.33–34: qe¬av ònerge¥av doxe¬a. I thank Robert Wilken for bring-
ing this passage to my attention.
27. Ibid., 3.33 (Anderson, 85).
28. Ibid., 1.22; cf. (Anderson, 36).
for our purposes is the realization that long before John and others
articulated this theory of the beholder, pilgrims to the living were
engaging in visual practices with the same goals: to render and perceive
divine presence. The fourth- and fifth-century texts about physical and
spiritual journeys suggest that far from introducing a new debate over
the power of vision, the painted icon reopened a debate that had its ori-
gins in the visual practices of pilgrims in earlier centuries. Icon venera-
tion was neither the first form of visual piety nor the last. The icon
painter concretized what the pilgrim-authors sought to create with
words: a static, decontextualized figure through which to perceive the
presence of the divine.29
John’s eloquent defense of images was composed centuries after
Paula, Palladius, and Theodoret had visited saints in the desert. But he
relied on an understanding of vision to be found in the devotion of pil-
grims who came centuries before him. Unlike iconoclasts, who insisted
on privileging the written word over images as the authentic means for
knowing God, both late antique pilgrims and eighth-century icono-
philes could confer equal status on the written word and images.30 To
pilgrims and iconophiles, scripture was not bound to any particular
physical object, whether a book or an image. Rather, it was a lived expe-
rience that was both visible and visual. Separated by centuries, both
forms of visual piety put the beholder at the center of all sacred encoun-
ters, conferring greater significance on the act of seeing than on the
object seen. Thus in privileging vision as a vehicle by which to enter and
participate in the biblical past, pilgrims set a vital precedent for the cult
of icons.
29. On this equivalence between word and image, see Gilbert Dagron,
“Holy Images and Likeness,” DOP 45 (1991): 23–33.
30. For a stimulating discussion of the cultural and theological context of
Byzantine iconoclasm, see Averil Cameron, “The Language of Images: The Rise
of Icons and Christian Representation,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana
Wood (Studies in Church History; Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 1–42, esp. 29.
The idea that the pilgrim’s destination contained the scattered image
of the divine presence was a potent one. It infused the fragments of pil-
grims’ writings, informed their descriptions, and privileged vision as the
sensory mode by which to reintegrate those moments of recognition.
Pilgrims engaged the eyes of faith in a participatory devotion, one that
linked them to the biblical past. This sensory piety shaped the ways
Christians defined their physical and spiritual journeys as well as their
responses to holy people, living and dead. By this tactile and conjuring
eye of faith, pilgrims articulated a theology of vision that would find its
fullest expression in the cult of icons. In a hymn to the holy man Julian
Saba, Ephrem the Syrian captures best the role of vision in gathering a
scattered divine presence:
I have seen you scattered;

I have seen you recollected.
Both you and your brothers
are depicted in our Lord.31
Like this poet, the pilgrims learned how to see living saints. Through
the travelogues, they found a biblical past scattered in the living saints
they encountered; and with the lingering gaze of the eye of faith, they
found a way to “recollect” those sacred moments.
31. Edmund Beck, Des heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen auf Abraham
Kidunaya und Julianos Saba (CSCO 322 & 323; Louvain: Peeters, 1972), 322.43,
III.3, translated in Sidney Griffith, “Julian Saba, ‘Father of the Monks’ of
Syria,” JECS 2 (1994): 185–216, esp. 205.
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———. Theaetetus. Text and trans.: The Theaetetus of Plato. Edited and trans-
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Pseudo-Basil. De hominis structura. Text: Basile de Césarée. Sur l’origine de
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Pseudo-Dionysius. Text: Corpus Dionysiacum. Edited by Beate Suchla, Gunter
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Pseudo-Lactantius. De passione Domini. Text: CSEL 27 (1893): 148–51. Edited
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Pseudo-Macarius. Homiliae. Text: Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios.
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Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Historia religiosa. Text: Théodoret de Cyr: Histoire des
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Vita Antonii by Athanasius. Text: Athanase d’Alexandrie: Vie d’Antoine. Edited by
G. J. M. Bartelink. SC 400. Paris: Cerf, 1994. Translated in Robert C.
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Vita Charitonis. Text: G. Garitte, “La vie prémétaphrastique de S. Chariton.”
Bulletin de l’institut historique belge de Rome 21 (1941): 5–46. Translated in
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Vita Cyri. Text: Coptic Texts, vol. 4, Coptic Martyrdoms. Edited by E. A. Wallis
Budge. London: British Museum, 1914. Reprinted New York: AMS, 1977,
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Vita Danielis stylitae (Vita antiquior). Text: Les Saints stylites. Edited by Hippolyte
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N.Y.: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977, 7–71.
Vita Hypatii by Callinicos. Text and trans.: Callinicos: Vie d’Hypatios. Edited and
translated by G. J. M. Bartelink. SC 177. Paris: Cerf, 1971.
Vita Macrinae by Gregory of Nyssa. Text: Grégoire de Nysse: Vie de sainte Macrine.
Edited and translated by Pierre Maraval. SC 178. Paris: Cerf, 1971.
Vita Melaniae Iunioris by Gerontius. Text: Vie de Sainte Mélanie. Edited by Denys
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of Melania the Younger. Studies in Women and Religion 14. New York: Edwin
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Vita Moysis by Gregory of Nyssa. Text: Gregorii Nysseni: De vita Moysis. Edited by
Herbert Musurillo. Gregorii Nysseni Opera, vol. 7, part 1. Leiden: Brill,
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Vita Pachomii. Text: Sancti Pachomii vitae graecae. Edited by F. Halkin. SH 19
(1932). Translated in Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia: The Lives, Rules
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Vita Pauli. Text: H. Hurter in W. Oldfather et al., Studies in the Text Tradition of
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Vita Pelagiae. Texts and trans.: Pélagie la Pénitente: Métamorphoses d’une légende,
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Vita Simeonis stylitae. Translated in Robert Doran, The Lives of Simeon Stylites.
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INDEX
Achilles Tatius, 20, 47; Leucippe and Apelles (monk), 54

Clitophon, 20–23, 28 Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli ), 93–95,
Acts of Andrew and Matthias, 47 100–101
Acts of Paul and Thecla, 151 apocalypses, 31
Acts of Thomas, 48 Apollo (monk), 56, 57–58, 60
Alexandria: pilgrimages to, 6, 67; visual Apollonius of Tyana. See Philostratus
impact of, 21 apophthegmata, 40, 41, 46–47n39,
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 174n8 157–58n82, 160–61n92
Ammon (monk), 58 Apuleius of Madauros, 20, 23–28,
ampullae (pilgrims’ flasks), 11–12, 107 142n29
anachoresis, 83 Aquilia Romanus (rhetorician),
Andrew (apostle), 47 18–19n57
angels, faces of, 160–62 Aristotle, 122, 124, 125
animals, human resemblance to, 147, Aristotle, attributed to: Physiognomonica,
148, 163 146
Anthony the Great, 13, 96–101, 134, armchair pilgrims, 4, 69
143–44. See also Athanasius, bishop of Arsenius, 160
Alexandria ascetics. See living saints; monastics
anti-Christ, 152 (monks and holy people)
Antinoë, desert of, 52 askesis, 63, 142
Antiochus (monk), 141 Asterius, bishop of Amasea, 115, 117,
Antonius Diogenes, 45–46; The Wonders 133
beyond Thule, 45–46 Astomi, diet of, 58n86
211
212 / Index
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, 2; Cassian, John, 3, 7, 138

“Letter to Virgins Who Went and characters, visual cues for, 20, 21–28,
Prayed in Jerusalem and Returned,” 32, 151–52
108–11; Life of Anthony, 13, 96–97, Chitty, Derwas, 44
99, 121, 137–38, 143–44, 154 Christianity, legalization of, 112
Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 113 Chronius (monk), 64
Aulus Gellius, 125 Cicero, 126, 127, 128, 129, 165
Aziz, Barbara Nimri, 82 civilization, boundaries of, 52
Classen, Constance, 121
Basil, bishop of Caesarea, 131 Cleombrotus of Sparta, 47
beards, 141, 142 Commentary on the Song of Songs (Gre-
Bethlehem, pilgrimages to, 106, 109, gory of Nyssa), 88
110, 167 Conferences (Cassian), 3
Bible: desire to experience, 10–11, conjuring, 32, 112, 177
29–34; displacement in biblical time, conversion, cognitive dissonance in, 76
54–55, 75, 101, 168; impact on pil- Copres (monk), 51n54
grims’ travel writings, 6; and pilgrim- Cousins, Ewert, 106–7
ages to biblical holy places, 6–13, Ctesias of Cnidos, 45
31–32, 39, 41, 103–14, 118–33; sens- Cupid and Psyche, tale of, 24–28
ing of, 29–34 curiositas, 24
Bible “actualisée,” 11n30 Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, 111, 118,
biblical citations, Old Testament: Gen. 175
5:3-32, 56; Exod. 33, 86–87; Prov. Cyril of Scythopolis, 42n21, 138n13,
15:13, 144; 2 Cor. 12, 63n108 162
biblical realism: articulation of, 32–33; Cyrus (monk), 86
defined, 29, 106–7; development of,
107; and visual access to biblical past, Dagron, Gilbert, 164
30, 32–33, 77, 168–70 Daniel the Stylite, 134n1, 141, 142
biography: in historiai, 40, 41–43; Delehaye, Hippolyte, 162–63
pagan philosophical anthologies Democritus, 130
of, 40, 41 desert asceticism: background to pil-
blindness, 26n90, 114–18 grims’ image of, 49; otherness of, 54;
blindness, spiritual, 114 and paradise, 85, 91–96; tropes for
Blumenthal, H. J., 130n111 describing, 72, 74, 75–76
body language, 147 De structura hominis (Pseudo-Basil),
Bordeaux, pilgrim from (Itinerarium 115
Burdigalense), 107 devil, physiognomy of, 154
boundaries, trope of, 72 diegesis, 44n26, 65n118
Bowersock, Glen, 38 diet, miraculous, 57–58
Bunge, Gabriel, 43n24 Diodorus Siculus, 58n86
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 18
Callimachus, Hymn, 26n90 displacement. See distance, trope of
Camarines, diet of, 58 distance, trope of, 30, 45–49, 75–76. See
Campbell, Mary, 56 also exoticism
Index / 213
divinity (divine beings): created through tance of, 115–17; as moral markers,
human gaze, 24–25, 28; invisibility 23; physiology of, 103; proper use of,
of, 25–28; sensory perception of, 29. 21, 22–23; reliability of, 147, 174. See
See also God, journeying to also gaze; seeing; vision
eyewitnessing, 19, 51, 52, 106–7
ecphrasis. See enargeia
Egeria (pilgrim), 6, 10, 102, 105, 110, faces, holy: black, 94n57; female,
119 155–59; gazing at, 85–87, 94–95,
Egypt (Egyptian desert): in ancient 134–35; grotesque, 94; legibility of,
novels, 47n42; miracles in, 46–47, 165–70; luminous, 94, 159, 160–65.
53–54; pilgrimages to, 1, 7, 11 See also physiognomy (face-reading)
eikonismos, trope of, 151, 152, 164 Fahnestock, Jeanne, 158n85
Elias (monk), 52, 55n73, 56 femininity, 148
Elsner, John ( Jaś), 75 Foucault, Michel, 28–29n102
emporia, spiritual, 8
enargeia (vivid description), 18, 19, gaze: of ascetics on others, 153–54; of
28–29, 70n133 converts, 76–77; divinity created
Ephrem the Syrian, 15–16, 67, 181 through, 24–25, 28; embodied (cum
Epicureans, 124 voluptate visenti), 25n88, 28; erotic,
epiphany, visible signs of, 26 131; on holy faces, 85–87, 94–95,
epitaphs, Roman, 70 101; at monumenta, 69–70; physiog-
ethnicity, 147, 148, 163 nomic, 166, 167, 168–70; recipro-
Eucharist, 90, 174, 175–76 cated, 21–23, 24; and self-assessment,
Eudoxia, 134n1 153; tactile, 124, 169, 173, 174. See
eulogiae (“blessings”), 91–92n44 also eyes; seeing
Eunapius, 40, 41n15 gender, and physiognomic theory,
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, 49–50n48 147–48, 159, 163
Eusebius of Teleda, 154 genre theory, 38
Eustochium (Roman pilgrim), 6 geographical writing: in historiai, 63–64;
Euthymius (monk), 141, 162 lists in, 59, 60
Evagrius of Pontus, 64, 112, 143, 153, Germanus, 3, 7
155 Gerontius: Life of Melania the Younger,
evidentia (vivid illustration), 19. See also 7–8
enargeia Gleason, Maud, 149, 159n88
exoticism: appeal of, 3, 45–49; defined, God: corporeality of, 87–91, 140; invisi-
29; in History of the Monks of Egypt, bility of, 112–13; journeying to, 81,
29, 49–61; in Lausiac History (Palla- 84, 85–91
dius), 29, 61–69. See also otherness Goehring, James E., 75, 83
Expositio totius mundi et gentium, Golden Ass, The (Apuleius), 20, 23–28
46–47n39, 58 Golgotha, pilgrimages to, 105–6, 107,
eyes: evil eye, 129–31; “eye of faith” 109, 167
(oculus fidei), 12–13, 32, 106–7, 133, Gospels: Luke 10:38-42, 110; John 9:1-
165–70, 173; “eye of the heart” (ocu- 41, 114
lus cordis), 140; fear of, 34; impor- Gregory of Nazianzus, 89
214 / Index
Gregory of Nyssa, 68n130, 81, 84, hyperbole, 60

87–89, 105n6, 109n25, 113, 115, Hyperboreans, longevity of, 56
124, 176; Commentary on the Song of
Songs, 88; Life of Moses, 81, 87, Iambulus, 46n37, 57, 58
111n32 iconoclasm, 180
icons, veneration of, 34, 113, 171,
Haberman, David L., 8–9, 170n121, 172 178–81
hagiography. See biography; saints’ lives “imagined” (imaginary, fabulous, alle-
hair, 140–42 gorical) journeys, 31, 45–46, 79–101
Hartog, François, 48, 102n2 passim
Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 83–84 imagines (wax models of faces), 17n50
hearing, reliability of, 111, 113–14, 118 Incarnation, 14–15, 112–13, 178
Helena, mother of Constantine, 105 invisibility: of divine beings, 25–28; of
Hermotimus (Lucian), 144–45 God, 112–13
Herodotus, 45, 47, 48, 53 Isidore, 57
Hippocrates, 130 Islands of the Sun (Iambulus), 57, 58
historiai: as biographical collection, itinerarium (itinerary), 43n24, 61
40–43; as literature, 40–41; as travel Itinerarium Burdigalense, 107
writing, 38–49, 72, 76, 77
Historia religiosa (Theodoret, bishop of Jacob, 156–57, 158; Life of Pelagia of
Cyrrhus), 39, 41–42 Antioch, 156–57, 158
History of the Monks in Egypt, The (Histo- Jaeger, Mary, 70, 73–74
ria monachorum) (anonymous): bibli- James of Cyrrhestica (monk), 42n20,
cal realism in, 29; critiques of, 44–45; 86n25, 137, 141
description of, 2, 35–38, 39; exoti- Jerome: on entering biblical time, 12;
cism (displacement) in, 29, 49–61, 72, idealized pilgrim of, 31; pilgrimage in
170; face-to-face encounters in, 86, Egyptian desert, 1; pilgrimage to
100, 128–29; genres combined in, 39; Palestine, 6; and pilgrims’ seeing with
impetus to record, 4; Latin transla- “eye of faith,” 12–13, 104, 105–7,
tion of (Rufinus of Aquileia), 1, 167; preparations for pilgrimage,
139–40; lists in, 59–60; miracles in, 1–2; on relics, 176
44, 45, 53; paradise in, 91–92, 100; ———works: Life of Saint Paul, the
physiognomy in, 138–39, 142, 160, First Hermit, 1, 81, 96–101; record of
161–62, 163–64; place-names in, 41; travels taken by, 1, 6, 31; stories
purpose of, 135; sensory engagement about pilgrims travels by, 1, 44, 80,
in, 29; utopian qualities of, 57; verac- 81, 96–101
ity of, 43 Jerusalem, pilgrimages to, 6, 68, 88,
holy men and women. See living saints; 105, 118
monastics (monks and holy people) Jesus Christ: healing touch of, 122;
holy places (sites), pilgrimages to, 6–13, immediacy of, 110, 111; and Poem on
31–32, 39, 41, 103–14, 118–33 the Passion of the Lord, 71–72; seeing
Homer, 46n37, 145 with “eye of faith,” 167; and temporal
Howard, Donald, 37 displacement, 55; visions of, 11, 12,
Howes, David, 121 86. See also Incarnation
Index / 215
Job, trials of, 53 Life of Melania the Younger (Gerontius),

John Cassian. See Cassian, John 7–8
John Chrysostom, 76–78, 114, 116–18, Life of Moses (Gregory of Nyssa), 81, 87,
172, 175 111n32
John Moschus, 42 Life of Onnophrius (Paphnutius), 79–80,
John of Damascus, 113, 120, 178–79, 92, 93
180 Life of Pelagia of Antioch ( Jacob),
John of Diolcos, 59, 163–64 156–57, 158
John of Ephesus, 42 Life of Saint Paul, the First Hermit
John of Lycopolis, 50, 56, 64, 65, 66, ( Jerome), 1, 81, 96–101
128, 134, 142, 143 Life of Symeon the Holy Fool (Leontius of
John the Baptist, head of, 120 Neapolis), 7n17, 33
Josipovici, Gabriel, 173 Life of Syncletica in the Jordan Desert,
Judea ( Judean desert): monasteries in, 158–59
33; seeing of, 104 Litia of Thessalonica, 3–4
Julian Saba, 181 Lives of the Eastern Saints ( John of Eph-
esus), 42
kalos kagathos, 145 Lives of the Prophets, 40
kissing, of True Cross, 119 living saints: physical resemblance to
biblical figures, 55–56, 134–70 pas-
language, visual (visualizing), 19–20, sim; physiognomy of, 32–33, 85–87,
100 134–70 passim; pilgrims’ descriptions
Lausiac History (Palladius): biblical real- of, 16, 32–33, 134–70 passim; theatri-
ism in, 29; Coptic version of, 4; cality of, 13; as visual access to biblical
description of, 2, 35–38, 39, 61–62; past, 30, 32–33, 77, 168–70; as visual
exoticism (displacement) in, 29, access to the divine, 14, 16–29, 85–91,
61–69, 170; genres combined in, 39; 101. See also monastics (monks and
impetus to record, 4; purpose of, 44, holy people)
62–63, 135; sensory engagement in, ———pilgrimages to: in fourth cen-
29; veracity of, 43, 62 tury, 1, 3; during pilgrimages to holy
Lausus, 44 places, 6–13; pilgrims’ experiences of,
Lavater, Johann Caspar, 166n111, 8, 96–101; pilgrims’ perceptions of,
167n114 5–6, 32–33; popularity of, 2, 76; rea-
Leontius of Neapolis, 7n17, 33 sons for, 1–2, 38, 87, 169
leptologia, 18–19n57 Livy, 69, 70, 74
letters, as surrogate pilgrims, 13–14 “localization of the holy,” 121
“Letter to Virgins Who Went and loca sancta, 106n13, 111n34. See also
Prayed in Jerusalem and Returned” Bible, and pilgrimages to biblical
(Athanasius), 108–11 holy places
Leucippe and Clitophon (Achilles Tatius), longevity, of distant and holy people,
20–23, 28 56–57
Leyerle, Blake, 9n23, 35n1, 36n3 Longinus, 19
Life of Anthony (Athanasius), 13, 96–97, Long-Lived Persons (Phlegon of
99, 121, 137–38, 143–44, 154 Tralles), 56
216 / Index
L’Orange, H. P., 161 Mystical Theology (Pseudo-Dionysius),

Lucian, 46, 144–45; Hermotimus, 89–90
144–45; True Story, A (Verae Histo-
riae), 46 narrative, visualizing power of, 28–29
Lysias, use of energeia, 18 nature, holy people’s relationship to,
57–58
Macarius the Great (monk), 4, 64, 142 Nemesius, bishop of Emesa, 132
magical papyri, 17n51 Nitria, Mount, pilgrimages to, 6, 63
Mamre, Oak of, 132 novels, visual cues for characters in, 20,
Mandeville, Sir John, 44n29; Travels, 21–28, 32
44n29
Marcella (pilgrim), 107–8 observation. See eyewitnessing; seeing
marvels, trope of, 30, 44–49, 53, 75 odoeporicon (travel guide), 44
masculinity, 147–48 On Physiognomy (anonymous), 149–50,
Matthias (apostle), 47 166
measurements, trope of, 72 On the Passion of the Lord (Pseudo-
Melania the Elder, 6–7n16, 86 Lactantius), 71–72
Melania the Younger, 6, 7–8, 10–11, 80 On the Sublime (attributed to Longi-
memory: ancient conceptions of, nus), 19
125–29; cultivation of, 166; saints’ opposition, 9
lives as aids to, 71 optics, theories of. See seeing; vision
Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass) Or (monk), 55, 56, 160
(Apuleius), 20, 23–28 oratory: and eyes, 165; and memory,
Miles, Margaret R., 83 126, 129; and visibility, 18
Miller, Patricia Cox, 16n48, 59, 135n4, Origen, 15
177n21 otherness, 9, 48. See also distance, trope
miracles, accounts of, 44–49, 53, 75, 173 of; exoticism
mirror images, value of, 146 otherworldly journeys, 31, 91–96
monastics (monks and holy people): Oxyrhynchus, 72–73, 151n62
eating habits of, 58; exoticism of, 29;
human price of, 62; listed traits of, Pachomian monastery, mealtime at, 58
59–60; as “living monuments” of bib- Pachomius (monk), 85
lical past, 30, 32–33, 61, 69–78; Palestine. See holy places (sites), pil-
longevity of, 57; number of, 2; pilgrimages to
grimages by, 85; pilgrims’ construc- Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, 2,
tion of, 29–30; as pilgrims’ guides 31n106, 39, 44, 61–65, 84–85,
and hosts, 6, 9–10, 61; visibility of, 100, 138, 142, 155. See also Lausiac
142–43. See also desert asceticism; liv- History
ing saints Pambo (monk), 86, 160, 162
Montserrat, Dominic, 156n78 Paphnutius: letters to, 13–14; Life of
monumentum, defined, 69–70, 73–75 Onnophrius, 79–80, 92, 93
moral lessons, seeing and feeling, 20, 34 Paradise, journeying to, 85, 91–96
Moschus, John. See John Moschus paradoxographies, 45, 57, 59
Moses, 86–87, 88, 91, 160 Patermuthius, 91
Index / 217
patristic literature, 40 metaphor, 68; purpose of, 104–5,

Paul (apostle): blinding of (Saul), 169; theoretical models of, 8–9,
26n90; description of, 151–52; 2 Cor. 83n12. See also holy places (sites), pil-
12, 63n108; as ur-pilgrim, 31n106, grimages to; living saints, pilgrimages
62–63; and visions of Paradise, 92, to
93–96 pilgrims: biased view in saints’ lives,
Paula (pilgrim), 6, 11, 44, 105–8, 110, 4–5; expectations of, 30, 80, 81, 101;
120, 133, 167, 173 goals of, 8; numbers of, 2; reading
Paulinus, bishop of Nola, 105, 118, 119, habits of, 10–11, 80; religious sensi-
177 bilities of, 2–3; sensory piety of,
Paul of Thebes, “the first hermit,” 97, 13–16, 32–33, 181; souvenirs of,
98–99, 141; Jerome’s Life of, 1, 11–13, 91–92n44, 119; suffering
96–101 (hardships) endured by, 52–53, 57,
Paul the Simple, 153, 161 62, 63–65. See also armchair pilgrims;
Pelagia of Antioch, 156–57, 158 spirituality, of pilgrims; surrogate pil-
Peter (apostle), 47, 55 grims
phantasiai (images), emotional and pilgrims’ flasks (ampullae), images on,
visual power of, 19 11–12, 107
Philip (apostle), 47 pilgrims’ writings. See travel writings
Philo of Alexandria, 123 (travelogues), by pilgrims
Philoponus, John, 130n111 Piteroum (pilgrim), 65, 66
Philoromus (pilgrim), 67–68 Plato, 21n68, 123; Theaetetus, 145–46;
Philostratus, 40, 53n62, 121n75, Timaeus, 123
128 Pliny, 52, 56, 126, 129n109, 146n43,
Phlegon of Tralles, 56 147, 150–51
physiognomic gaze, 166, 167, Plotinus, 130n111, 155n75
168–70 Plutarch, 47, 129, 130
physiognomic handbooks, 136–37, Polemo, 149
149–50, 166 Posidonius (pilgrim), 66
Physiognomonica (Pseudo-Aristotle), Postumianus, travels of, 3
146 progymnasmata (school exercises), 18
physiognomy (face-reading): criticism Pseudo-Dionysius, 89–90
of, 145–55; defined, 136; of living Pseudo-Lactantius: On the Passion of the
saints, 32–33, 85–87, 134–70 Lord, 71–72
passim; modern, 149n55; validity of, Psyche. See Cupid and Psyche, tale of
135–36; of women, 155–59. See also
ethnicity Quintilian, 18, 19, 129
Piacenza, pilgrim from, 119, 120
pilgrimages: defined, 39–40; descrip- “relative worship,” 179
tions of, 6–13, 31–32, 104–14, relics, veneration of, 34, 119–20, 171,
118–33; Greek or Latin terms for, 176–78
7–8; ideals of, 81, 82–83, 84, 100; repetitive language, 59
as journey toward God, 81, 84, resurrection, 83, 112
85–91; letters in lieu of, 13–14; as Rhetorica ad Herennium, 127, 162
218 / Index
rhetorical devices: for controlling els, 20, 21–28; Christian hierarchy

reader’s view, 60; for rendering dis- of, 132; heightened, 27–28; percep-
placement (distancing), 50–51; for tion of the sacred through, 16; relia-
rendering visibility, 18, 20 bility of, 148; and sensory engage-
———types of: repetition, 59; short ment, 29; and sensory piety, 13–16,
notices, 60, 171, 172 32–33, 181; and universal sensory
Rome, pilgrimages to, 67 perception, 103
Romm, James, 46n35, 60 Shaw, Teresa, 153, 156
Rufinus of Aquileia, 1, 139–40, sight. See eyes; gaze; seeing; vision
163n104 Silvanius (monk), 160, 162
Simonides, 127
“sacred center” theory, 8–9n21 Sinai desert, pilgrimages to, 110
Said, Edward, 37 Sisoes (monk), 160, 162
saints’ lives: as aids to memory, 71; Slater, Candace, 8–9n21, 169
bias in, 4–5; compared to historiai, Socrates, 145–46
39–42; impact of pilgrims’ travel soul: journey toward God, 31, 88–89;
writings, 6; reasons for reading, revealed in physiognomy, 144–45,
1–2, 11, 13, 80. See also titles starting 146–47, 150–51, 153–55
with “Life of ” spirituality, of pilgrims: and physical
salvation: recognition of, 152–53; visu- journeys, 67–69; recovery of, 5–6, 13,
alization of, 90 31
Samuel, relics of, 176 Spiritual Meadow (Moschus), 42
sanctity, physiognomy of, 127 storytelling, 172
Santa Pudenziana (Rome), apse mosaic, Strabo, 46
119 suffering (hardships), endured by pil-
Sarapion (pilgrim), 66–67, 84 grims, 52–53, 57, 62, 63–65
Satran, David, 40 Sulpicius Severus, 3
Saul. See Paul (apostle) surrogate pilgrims, 13–14
scars, for identification, 151n62 Symeon the Elder (monk), 84, 141
Scetis, 52, 53 Symeon the Younger (monk), 42n20
seeing: active and passive ways of, 19, synaxaria, development of, 43
133; and being (becoming), 33, 34, Syria, pilgrimages to, 6
131; of God, idealized, 84; and hav- Syrian asceticism, 39
ing, 34; and memory, 125–29; and
perception, 103; by pilgrims, 104–14; tactile sense. See touching
Platonized theory of, 123–24; Psy- tasting, reliability of, 175
che’s ability for, 25–27; reliability of, tattoos, 151n62
111–14; transformation through, teardrops, as character signifier, 22
110–11; uncovering new modes of, Testament of the Lord, 152
87. See also eyes; Theaetetus (Plato), 145–46
gaze theatricality, of living saints, 13
self-assessment, 153 Thebaid, pilgrimages to, 6, 64
senses: ancient hierarchy of, 122–24; Theodore (martyr), 176
and characterization in ancient nov- Theodore of Mopsuestia, 90
Index / 219
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, 39, Turner, Edith, 83n12

41–42, 71, 86, 105, 137, 140, 141, Turner, Victor, 9n23, 83n12
154–55, 160–61n92; Historia religiosa, typology, 173
39, 41–42
Theodosius (monk), 42n20, 140–41 utopian writing, 54, 56, 57
Theon (monk), 51, 55, 72–73, 160–61
“third eye,” 166n111 Valeria (surrogate pilgrim), 13–14
Thomas (apostle), 47, 48 Victricius, bishop of Rouen, 178
Timaeus (Plato), 123 Vigilantius, 176
time, displacement in, 54–56 Vikan, Gary, 107
topographical detail, trope of, 72 visibility, 14, 16–29
touching, 32, 104, 118–33, 173; and vision: ancient knowledge of, 122–25;
tactile gaze, 124, 169, 173, 174; and defined, 103; and memory, 125–29;
tactile piety, 120, 122, 132; and tac- reliability of, 111–14; theological
tile visuality, 104 construct of, 114–18; trope of, 32. See
“touring,” 8 also eyes; gaze; seeing
Travels (Mandeville), 44n29 visions, of Christ, 11, 12, 86
travel writing (travelogues): and con- visual encounters: and access to the
struction of reality, 30, 37, 49; Greek, divine, 14, 24–25, 28, 85–91, 101;
30n105; historiai as, 38–49; “imag- with holy places, 104–14; perma-
ined,” 31, 45–46, 79–101 nence of, 16, 128–29
passim; literary sources used in, 43; visuality, defined, 103
narrative features of, 6, 29; as retro- visual (visualizing) language, 19–20, 100
spective device, 78; tropes of, 72 visual piety, 110, 111, 122, 169, 174,
———by pilgrims: compared to pagan 176
travelogues, 29, 35–78 passim; Voluptas (“Pleasure ), 28
description of, 2–3; literary dimen- voyeurism, 24
sions of, 5–6, 30–31, 35–38; narrative
features of, 5–6, 30–31; plausibility Ward, Benedicta, 45
of, 5; poetics of, 3, 30, 36n3; as weeping, in ancient novels, 22
prospective devices, 30, 78; purpose witnessing. See eyewitnessing
of, 76; readers’ expectations shaped women, physical appearance of,
by, 30, 80, 81, 101; about trips to 155–59. See also physiognomy (face-
divine and embodied presences, 31, reading)
79–101 passim; vicarious sensory Wonders beyond Thule, The (Antonius
experiences in, 16 Diogenes), 45–46
True Story, A (Verae Historiae) (Lucian),
46 Zeno the Stoic, 124
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The Memory of the Eyes

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press, Ltd.

© 2000 by the Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

Portions of chapter 2 have appeared in “The Historia Mona-

Chapter 4 of this book is a revised and expanded version of

1. Pilgrims to the Living in Context

Many teachers, friends, and colleagues have given generously of them-

Rapp, Ian Rutherford, Elizabeth Ann Schechter, Teresa Shaw, Gary

Hamilton, New York

I refer to ancient works by their standard English titles in the text of

ACW Ancient Christian Writers

CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium

LVJer Athanasius, Lettre à des vierges qui étaient allées prier

Pilgrims to the Living in Context

tales recounted the wonder-working and wisdom of distant monastics,

religious sensibilities. As literary works, these travelogues provide a

TALES OF THE MONKS

9. Butler, The Lausiac History, part 1, 149–50, citing Amélineau, Monuments

their own sense of displacement, their expectations, and their spiritual

lary from other types of travel tales, including accounts of otherworldly

HOLY PLACES, HOLY PEOPLE,

In addition to broadening the literary context for pilgrimages to the liv-

14. Jerome, Ep. 108.9–14.

(HL 46.2, 5) mentions a similar path undertaken by Melania’s grandmother,

“linear” pilgrimage, and journeys to holy people coming closer to the

this work). In a different context (rural Brazilian pilgrimage), Candace Slater

Sources historiques et explorations archéologiques (Geneva: Mission suisse d’archéolo-

28. V. Mel. 21 (Clark, 44).

temporary architectural or liturgical details from the holy site. For

33. Gary Vikan, “Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis on

physical appearances to gain a fuller perception of biblical events or ﬁg-

PILGRIMS AND SENSORY PIETY

letter as an instrument of visual presence, see Evagrius, Ep. ad Melaniam, 1 (Par-

became increasingly difﬁcult to uphold the apologists’ stance that “in

Ephrem created the conditions for a sensory awareness through prox-

THE CULTURE OF VISIBILITY

To appreciate how Christian narratives created visual access to the

ature. Christian writers shared with the larger Greco-Roman culture an

50. As in the use of imagines, “wax models of faces” prominently displayed in

53. On the importance of visualization for these descriptive techniques, see

Vivid description, or enargeia, relied on the audience’s capacity not

details (De ﬁguris sententiarum et elocutionis 2, ed. Halm, 23.16–17, cited in

language could this emotional and synesthetic effect be achieved.62

62. A point underscored by G. Zanker, who notes the close connection

paintings, landscapes, and the beloved.66 All this visibility overwhelms

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 170. I follow Winkler’s transla-

The weeping eye is another device by which Achilles Tatius exposes

75. Achilles Tatius, 5.25.4 (Winkler, 247).

arching visual paradigm, however, the dangers of visual experience are

80. A proclivity he comes to enjoy, even as an ass: “I refreshed my inquisi-

divine gaze of Venus is signiﬁcant. Here is a goddess accustomed to hav-

85. Apuleius, Met. 4.31.

servant, he crowds the space with “invisible” and “unseen” presences.

As restrictive as the divine bridegroom’s injunctions may be, Psyche

95. Apuleius, Met. 5.13 (Walsh, 87).

ﬂight of the sensory body: “The hopelessness of the situation turned

100. Apuleius, Met. 6.14 (Walsh, 108).